SCHOTT slides are manufactured from a high quality, low intrinsic fluorescence borosilicate glass. The glass slides are cleaned and coated in a class 100, environmentally controlled clean room to ensure contamination and artifact free surfaces. The aminosilane coatings are applied using a unique, and innovative method developed and optimized by SCHOTT, that allows the production of large lot sizes with excellent intra-lot, and inter-lot reproducibility. Each slide lot is tested using both physical and functional quality control checks. The density of the aminosilane groups in the coatings remain uniform over the entire surface of the slides, and is optimized to maximise the DNA binding capacity. The surface hydrophobicity is tightly controlled to optimize the performance with both contact and non-contact microarray printers. The Slide A+ surface is more hydrophobic than the AStar surface, resulting in smaller spots, making it ideally suited for printing higher density arrays.
NEXTERION® Slide A+, and Slide AStar are compatible with the most commonly used aminosilane protocols and a wide range of spotting buffers. This makes it easy to evaluate and switch to the NEXTERION® aminosilane slides from competitor slides.
Selecting the most suitable NEXTERION® aminosilane coating
Choosing the best SCHOTT aminosilane slide for the application depends on a number of factors. One important factor is the buffer used for printing the arrays. SCHOTT has developed a printing buffer system (NEXTERION® Spot A HD) for printing high-density arrays of up to 50k spots on the SCHOTT aminosilane slides. The buffer system is designed to minimize sample evaporation during long print runs.
Packaging and storage
NEXTERION® Slide AStar and A+ are packaged in specially developed compatible plastic boxes, and sealed under an inert atmosphere, to ensure the substrates have a long and stable shelf life. The slides should be stored at room temperature in the sealed packaging, and are ready-to-use from the box.
Format
NEXTERION® Slide AStar and A+ are available in packs of 25-slides with optional code 128 barcodes enabling automated sample tracking. The AStar and A+ aminosilane coating are also available in 16-well slide, 48-well slide and 96-well microplate formats. For further information refer to the section on “Multi-well formats”.
SCHOTT Microarray Solutions offers a kit with pre-prepared reagents for the blocking, hybridization and washing of 25 aminosilane coated slides printed with oligonucleotides.