Capillary pins have tapered ends that use surface tension and adhesion to enable several hundred depositions from a single uptake, offering high precision for small volumes and high-throughput use. Blunt-end pins with flat tips excel in direct, highly consistent contact dispensing. Together, both pin types provide versatile options for diverse microdispensing tasks.
PinDMD
Contact-Based, Picoliter to Nanoliter
Pin-Driven Micro-Dispenser
The Pin-Driven MicroDispenser (PinDMD) is a contact-based system for precise liquid deposition with blunt-end or capillary pins, with standard heads supporting up to 36 pins (6×6) and custom configurations available. It delivers accurate, reproducible dispensing on glass slides, membranes, microfluidic cartridges, and 96-well plates, making it ideal for high-throughput scientific and industrial workflows.
The PinDMD can operate on our iTWO, iONE and iZERO microdispensing instruments.
Consistent Contact Precision – Discover the PinDMD in the Brochure (PDF)
Key Features
- 36 pins per head (6x6)
- 4.5 mm dot-pitch
- capillary or blunt end pins
- 80 µm to 500 µm tip diameter
- single droplet volume 350 pL to 25 nL
- absolute chemical inertness
Functional Principle
Contact printing depends strongly on target surface wettability, which governs deposited volume and process reliability. As the tip approaches and contacts the substrate, conductive adhesive forces and surface tension allow microdroplets to remain on the surface when the needle retracts. This demonstrates the precise interplay of pin mechanics, liquid properties, and surface interactions.
Various Available Pin Types
Different Volumes
Pin sizes act as conductors of transfer volumes, harmonizing with liquid surface tension and surface wetting intricacies. Explore our contact spotting technology, offering diameters ranging from 80 to 500 µm. This spectrum accommodates precise deposition of 0.5 to 30 nanoliter sample aliquots.
Diverse Layouts of Pin Heads
We offer a variety of pin-head layouts tailored to your application. The standard head features a 6×6 configuration with 4.5 mm spacing for 384-well plates, and custom layouts are available for other plate formats or specific project requirements, so you can precisely match your pin spotter to your research needs.
High-throughput contact microdispensing
Our 10×10 pin head offers 100 fully synchronized channels for simultaneous aspiration and spotting, originally developed as a custom high-throughput solution. It supports 384- and 96-well formats and flexible spotting patterns on plastic or functionalized substrates. This technology is now integrated in the iONE-1200 platform and in productive use at INTER-ARRAY (Germany).