Patent attributes
This invention provides method and apparatus for performing chemical and biochemical reactions in solution using in situ generated photo-products as reagent or co-reagent. In particular, the present invention provides methods and devices for selectively converting photogenerated reagent precursors to photogenerated reagents comprising a substrate comprising at least one solid surface containing a plurality of isolated reaction sites; and an optical system operably linked to the substrate comprising a light source and a computer-controlled spatial optical modulator to form an irradiation pattern, wherein the irradiation pattern selectively irradiates a plurality of reaction sites without use of a photolithographic mask. The method and apparatus of the present invention have applications in parallel synthesis of molecular sequence arrays on solid surfaces.