Signal and sensitivity enhancement through optical interference coating for DNA and protein microarray applications.

Optical inteference (OI) coated slides with unique optical properties were utilized in microarray analyses, demonstrating their enhanced detection sensitivity over traditional microarray substrates. The OI coating is comprised of a proprietary multilayered, dielectric, thin-film interference coating located beneath the functional coating (aminosilane or epoxysilane). It is designed to enhance the fluorescence in the Cy3 and Cy5 channel by increasing the light absorption of the dyes by about 6-fold and by redirecting emitted fluorescence into the detector during scanning, resulting in a theoretical limit of about 12-fold signal amplification.