Color corrected optical relay system for photolithographic DNA-synthesis

Synthetic creation of nucleic acids (e.g. DNA, mRNA) provides a means for accelerated research and engineering of biological materials as e.g. employed in genome analysis and RNA therapeutics. The creation of so-called DNA-microarrays can be efficiently performed on a large scale using maskless array synthesis (MAS): a digital mask is created by a digital micromirror device (DMD) which is illuminated with UV light and subsequently imaged onto target chemicals with an optical relay system. Hitherto, Offner relay systems have been used to realize a 1:1 imaging. Developing an advanced open-source MAS platform optical relay systems covering a larger numerical aperture and larger field of view have been studied. The developed catadioptric relay system suits the largest available DMDs and is corrected for first order axial and lateral color enabling the application of UV-LEDs as an inexpensive light source. This talk will elaborate on the optical design illustrating the design evolution, aberration correction and compare different relay alternatives. Results and measurements of the final imaging performance of the maskless photolithographic system will be presented. 80 n Optischer Systeme Christian Sinn