a wafer for synthesizing biopolymers which includes a solid phase support material , a reaction chamber which receives and retains the support material and at least one inert porous material which allows flow through the wafer . also included is a segmented wafer synthesis device comprising at least one , and preferably numerous , wafers for the simultaneous synthesis of multiple defined - sequenced biopolymers . further there are process steps for synthesizing a variety of biopolymers . synthetic polynucleotides have played a key role in studies of genetic organization through their use as primers for dna sequencing and as hybridization probes , linkers and adapters in the cloning of genes .