Development of High-Throughput substrates for Generating Two-Dimensional Nanoparticles Assemblies and for Screening Prot
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Development of High-Throughput substrates for Generating Two-Dimensional Nanoparticles Assemblies and for Screening Protein Adsorption Rajendra R. Bhat and Jan Genzer Department of Chemical Engineering, North Carolina State University, Raleigh, NC 27695
ABSTRACT We discuss methods leading to the fabrication of orthogonal substrates comprising surfaceanchored polymer brushes, in which the polymer brush grafting density and molecular weight vary independently in two mutually perpendicular directions. We demonstrate that these orthogonal polymer substrates can be used as intelligent combinatorial platforms that facilitate the spatial distribution of nanoparticles and allow screening of protein adsorption on surfaces.
INTRODUCTION One focus of contemporary biomaterials science is to be able to understand the relationship between surface and interfacial properties and the response of the surface to a biological phenomenon. Having acquired this knowledge, it will be possible to efficiently control surface properties, which in turn govern the biocompatibility of synthetic biomaterials [1]. In order to do this, a careful and quantitative evaluation of the surface properties of the biomaterial is required. For most commercially available biomaterials such a systematic study is precluded by their complex surface chemistry. Consequently, it is difficult to correlate the events that occur at the blood-biomaterial interface with a particular property of the interface [2]. Self–assembled monolayers (SAMs) and surface grafted polymers serve as model surfaces that allow researchers to achieve molecular level control over surface properties, both for fundamental studies of surfaces and for technological applications [3]. While early studies of SAMs concentrated mainly on preparing substrates with laterally homogeneous structures, recent advances in the field have led to the development of a plethora of new technologies that allow for creating SAMs with two-dimensional chemical patterns [4]. In particular, microcontact printing (µCP) has proven to be a convenient method for preparing chemically patterned substrates [5]. Grafting of polymer chains to the surface enables amplification of response of the surface to a biological phenomenon by increasing number of responsive functional groups attached to the surface. Techniques involving the patterning of thicker polymer layers grafted to the substrate have been developed as well [6-13]. In these techniques, the material surface is selectively decorated with polymerization initiators and macromolecules are grown directly from the surface (so-called “grafting from” polymerization). Using this method, the thickness of the overcoat film can be adjusted by simply varying the polymerization conditions (time, monomer concentration, and temperature). The soft-lithography techniques always produce sharp boundaries between distinct chemical regions on the substrate. This feature makes soft lithography useful for decorating substrates with well-defined chemical patterns of various shapes
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