What kind of silicon micro DNA extraction surfaces exist?
Methods using silica beads and silica resins have already been created which successfully isolated DNA molecules which can then be PCR amplified. However, these methods have a few problems associated with them. First, beads and resins are highly variable depending on how well they are packed and are thus hard to reproduce. Each loading of a micro-channel can result in a different amount of packing and thus change the amount of DNA that adsorbed to the channel. Furthermore, these methods result in a two step manufacturing process. Silica structures are a much more effective method of packing material because they are etched into the channel during its fabrication and is thus the result of a one step manufacturing processes via soft lithography. Silica structures are therefore easier to use in highly parallelized designs (since beads or resins don’t need to be introduced post manufacturing the chip).
