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How Is A Flowcell Made? How Much Does It Cost?
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How Is A Flowcell Made? How Much Does It Cost?

Dec 21, 2023
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ASeq Newsletter
ASeq Newsletter
How Is A Flowcell Made? How Much Does It Cost?
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Last time I looked at a HiSeq X flowcell and tried to document its construction. This approach seems to be used on most of Illumina’s recent sequencers (HiSeq, MiniSeq and NovaSeq).

Basic flowcell construction. NovaSeq substrate seems to be thicker (1.1mm) and channel aperture larger (1mm).

One question I have is what plastic is used to form the channel here. So I tried doing some tests… the material seems to have roughly the same density as water (doesn’t float or sink). It self-extinguishes, and burns with an orange(ish) flame. It seems to get tacky around 300 to 350 degrees C.

Various Illumina patents talk about Black Kapton (Polyimide). But this doesn’t quite add up… I decided to take some of the film from a NovaSeq flowcell as see if I could create a channel with it.

I sandwiched it between two pieces of cover glass and stuck it on a hot plate. With some poking this formed a reasonably stable channel:

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