A simple and selective technique which immobilizes protein onto a solid substrate by using UV illumination has been developed. In protein immobilization, a Bovine serum albumin (BSA) performed bifunctional role as a cross-linker between substrate and proteins and as a blocker inhibiting a nonspecific protein adsorption. A new photo-induced protein immobilization process has been investigated at each step by fluorescence microscopy, ellipsometry, and Fourier transform infrared (FT-IR) spectroscopy. A UV photomask has been used to induce selective protein immobilization on target regions of the surface of the SiO2 substrates under UV illumination with negligible nonspecific binding. The UV illumination also showed improved photostability than the conventional methods which employed bifunctional photo-crosslinker molecules of photo-reactive diazirine. This new UV illumination-based photo-addressable protein immobilization provides a new approach for developing novel protein microarrays for multiplexed sensing as well as other types of bio-immobilization in biomedical devices and biotechnologies. (C) 2012 Elsevier B. V. All rights reserved.