LOW-COST CONTINUOUS MANUFACTURING OF MICROFLUIDIC PLATFORMS FOR REMOTE AUTOMATED ROOM TEMPERATURE X-RAY PROTEIN CRYSTALLOGRAPHY

X-ray crystallography is one of the leading tools to analyze the 3D structure, and therefore function of proteins and other biological macromolecules.Traditional methods of mounting individual crystals for X-ray diffraction analysis are tedious and can damage fragile protein crystals.Furthermore, the advent of serial crystallography methods explicitly requires the mounting of large numbers of crystals.To address this, we have developed the array-type fixed-target device for X-ray crystallography (AFD-X), which simplifies the process of mounting numerous protein crystals for diffraction analysis and can be manufactured at large scale.Our study details the design, construction, and performance evaluation of AFD-X, along with a comprehensive exploration of low-cost roll-to-roll (R2R) fabrication techniques for mass production.We utilized standard photolithography and soft lithography techniques to create PDMS molds, which were then used for nanoimprinting to fabricate the patterned polymer grids, a crucial component of AFD-X chips.These grids feature individual crystal traps with 150 m and 30 m holes, designed for efficient removal of excess solution.We demonstrated the roll-to-roll fabrication of these polymer grids, utilizing a new grade of polymer, Norland Optical Adhesives (NOA), which exhibits high optical transparency and signal-to-noise ratio suitable for X-ray applications (Figure 2).