The micro scale cones were created as design tests for drug-carrying micro needles that could be injected into patients and would slowly degrade, releasing drug over an extended period of time. Larger arrays were printed of select micro needles. They were made and imaged by Shawn Kilpatrick and Roxana Piotzowska at the Advanced Science Research Center of the Graduate Center, for the research of Khan Tzan, a graduate student at the University of Connecticut.