Methods and apparatus relate to reduction of sequence errors generated during synthesis of nucleic acids on a microarray chip. The error reduction can include synthesis of complementary strands (to template strands), using a short universal primer complementary to the template strands and polymerase. Heteroduplex can be formed by melting and re-annealing complementary strands and template strands. The heteroduplexes containing a mismatch can be recognized and cleaved by a mismatch endonuclease. The mismatch-containing cleaved heteroduplexes can be removed from the microarray chip using a global buffer exchange. The error free synthetic nucleic acids generated therefrom can be used for a variety of applications, including synthesis of biofuels and value-added pharmaceutical products.