• Transactions of the Korean Society of Mechanical Engineers B
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• v.34 no.1
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• pp.89-94
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• 2010

Patterning bacteria and cells on substrates has potential applications in molecular biology, antimicrobial drug screening, environmental monitoring and tissue engineering. We developed a technique to deposit two-dimensional array of bacterial cells onto an agar plate by modifying commercially available thermal inkjet printers. The concentration of the bacterial solution in the cartridge was carefully determined to ensure a single cell suspension in a droplet ejected from a nozzle. We measured quantitatively the effects of the bacterial concentration and the agar concentration on patterning performance. Bacterial patterning by inkjet printer is a low-cost and versatile technique which may replace the existing sophisticated methods.