Laser writing is used to structure surfaces in many different ways in materials and life sciences. However, combinatorial patterning applications are still limited. Here we present a method for cost-efficient combinatorial synthesis of very-high-density peptide arrays with natural and synthetic monomers. A laser automatically transfers nanometre-thin solid material spots from different donor slides to an acceptor. Each donor bears a thin polymer film, embedding one type of monomer. Coupling occurs in a separate heating step, where the matrix becomes viscous and building blocks diffuse and couple to the acceptor surface. Furthermore, we can consecutively deposit two material layers of activation reagents and amino acids. Subsequent heat-induced mixing facilitates an in situ activation and coupling of the monomers. This allows us to incorporate building blocks with click chemistry compatibility or a large variety of commercially available non-activated, for example, posttranslationally modified building blocks into the array's peptides with >17,000 spots per cm2.

In this review, we describe different methods of microarray fabrication based on the use of micro-particles/-beads and point out future tendencies in the development of particle-based arrays. First, we consider oligonucleotide bead arrays, where each bead is a carrier of one specific sequence of oligonucleotides. This bead-based array approach, appearing in the late 1990s, enabled high-throughput oligonucleotide analysis and had a large impact on genome research. Furthermore, we consider particle-based peptide array fabrication using combinatorial chemistry. In this approach, particles can directly participate in both the synthesis and the transfer of synthesized combinatorial molecules to a substrate. Subsequently, we describe in more detail the synthesis of peptide arrays with amino acid polymer particles, which imbed the amino acids inside their polymer matrix. By heating these particles, the polymer matrix is transformed into a highly viscous gel, and thereby, imbedded monomers are allowed to participate in the coupling reaction. Finally, we focus on combinatorial laser fusing of particles for the synthesis of high-density peptide arrays. This method combines the advantages of particles and combinatorial lithographic approaches.

Microcavity arrays represent millions of different reaction compartments to screen for e.g. molecular interactions, exogenous factors for cells or enzymatic activity. We present a novel method to selectively synthesize different compounds in arrays of microcavities with up to 1,000,000 cavities per cm 2 . In our approach, polymer microparticles with embedded preactivated monomers are selectively transferred into microcavities with laser radiation. After particle patterning, heating of the particle matrix simultaneously leads to diffusion and coupling of the monomers inside each microcavity separately. This method exhibits flexibility, 2 not only in the choice of compounds, but also in the choice of particle matrix material, which determines the chemical reaction environment. The laser-assisted selective functionalization of microcavities can be easily combined with the intensively growing number of laser applications for patterning of molecules and cells, which is useful for the development of novel biological assays.

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