Surface Patterned Omniphobic Tiles (SPOTs): a versatile platform for scalable liquid handling

Abstract

Manipulating liquids is a ubiquitous need for experiments across numerous scientific disciplines. To overcome limitations of current methods, we introduce Surface Patterned Omniphobic Tiles (SPOTs). This platform combines geometry and surface engineering, building on discontinuous wetting approaches to leverage capillarity for metering liquids. The SPOTs platform allows manipulation of hundreds to thousands of independent experiments without expensive equipment or large consumable costs. These devices can handle a wide range of liquid types and volumes (<10 nanoliters to >10 microliters) with better precision than pipetting. The platform is inexpensive and easy to fabricate, fast and intuitive to use, and cross-compatible with existing microwell plate layouts. We demonstrate how these capabilities facilitate diverse experiments including testing antibiotic combinations for synergy and antagonism, material screening of perovskites, and genotyping microbial isolates. We anticipate SPOTs will enable users from disparate domains to quickly and easily run a wide range of high-throughput experiments.