Renewable Electrode Array Based on Transformable Metal for Scaling up DNA Synthesis and Manipulation

Synthetic DNA is essential for various areas. Array-based synthetic technologies have been developed, and owing to scalability their synthetic throughput can be dramatically increased with reduced time and cost. However, the traditional arrays are usually fabricated on solid and rigid substrates which can hardly be renewed, their scalability is still limited, which hinders further advance of the synthetic technology. Here, a renewable array based on transformable gallium (Ga) electrode for DNA synthesis and facilitate its downstream manipulation is reported. After the DNA synthesis based on electrochemically triggered phosphoramidite chemistry on the Ga electrode, the electrode can be simply renewed by converting its tip into a drop of liquid metal (LM) so that the remaining electrode can be used for a new synthetic cycle. It also found that by repeated deformations of the LM drop, producing increased oxidation layer on the Ga, the surface DNA can be encapsulated within the LM drop for protection and easy manipulation. It is demonstrated that programmable DNA synthesis and manipulation can be accomplished on a microfluidic chip, which can be used for highthroughput, low-cost DNA synthesis and manipulation for data storage.