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Polymeric materials successfully applied in biomedical applications have an issue of poor surface properties which may restrict their applications as biomaterials. The present paper aims to study the effect of oxygen and nitrogen plasma treatment on physico-chemical properties of poly(dimethylsiloxane) (PDMS) and enhancement in its biocompatibility. Various characterization techniques including Fourier transform infrared spectroscopy, x-ray photoelectron spectroscopy, scanning electron microscopy (SEM), atomic force microscopy were used to evaluate the changes in surface chemistry and morphology of plasma treated PDMS. Changes in the wettability after plasma treatments and the effects of ageing on wettability were studied by contact angle measurement. Ageing studies showed that the contact angle was stable after two hours. The effect of plasma treatment on biocompatibility was studied through cell adhesion and MTT using 3T3 fibroblast cells. Morphology of cells obtained through SEM was analyzed using ImageJ software. Among the different treated and untreated samples, substantial enhancement in biocompatibility was observed for nitrogen plasma treated PDMS for 5 min in terms of highest cell area observed from cell adhesion test and highest cell viability observed from MTT test. This may be probably due to its highest polarity (0.4) and surface energy (33.3 N mm −2 ) with a moderate surface roughness (R rms =100.24 nm) among the other treated and untreated samples.

Two dimensional nanostructures have been created on the rutile TiO2 (110) surfaces via ion irradiation technique. Enhanced anomalous photo- absorption response is displayed, where nanostructures of 15 nm diameter with 0.5 nm height, and not the smaller nanostructures with larger surface area, delineate highest absorbance. Comprehensive investigations of oxygen vacancy states, on ion- irradiated surfaces, display a remarkable result that the number of vacancies saturates for higher fluences. A competition between the number of vacancy sites on the nanostructure in conjunction with its size is responsible for the observed anomalous photo-absorption.

An enhanced biocompatibility from nanodot patterned TiO2 surfaces, fabricated by ion beam sputtering, has been observed here through its interaction with plasmid DNA. Investigations of the persistence length and the areal conformation of DNA show that the biocompatibility increases with ion fluence. Presence of nanostructures and increased surface roughness, in conjugation with higher oxygen vacancy sites that promote charge transfer from DNA moiety, are responsible for the increased hydrophilicity and biocompatibility of the patterned surfaces.

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