Poly(dimethylsiloxane) (PDMS) has become a widely used material for microfluidic and biological applications. However, PDMS has unacceptably high levels of nonspecific protein adsorption, which significantly lowers the performance of PDMS-based microfluidic chips. Most existing methods to reduce protein fouling of PDMS are to make the surface more hydrophilic by surface oxidization, polymer grafting, and physisorbed coatings. These methods suffer from the relatively short-term stability, the multistep complex treatment procedure, or the insufficient adsorption reduction. Herein, we developed a novel and facile modification method based on self-assembled peptides with well-tailored amino acid composition and sequence, which can also interact strongly with the PDMS surface in the same way as proteins, for suppressing the nonspecific protein fouling and improving the biocompatibility of PDMS-based microfluidic chips. We first demonstrated that an ionic complementary peptide, EAR16-II with a sequence of [(Ala-Glu-Ala-Glu-Ala-Arg-Ala-Arg)2], can readily self-assemble into an amphipathic film predominantly composed of tightly packed β-sheets on the native hydrophobic and plasma-oxidized hydrophilic PDMS surfaces upon low concentrations of carbohydrates. The self-assembled EAR16-II amphipathic film exposed its hydrophobic side to the solution and thus rendered the PDMS surface hydrophobic with water contact angles (WCAs) of around 110.0°. However, the self-assembled EAR16-II amphipathic film exhibited excellent protein-repelling and blood compatibility properties comparable to or better than those obtained with previously reported methods. A schematic model has been proposed to explain the interactions of EAR16-II with the PDMS surface and the antifouling capability of EAR16-II coatings at a molecular level. The current work will pave the way to the development of novel coating materials to address the nonspecific protein adsorption on PDMS, thereby broadening the potential uses of PDMS-based microfluidic chips in complex biological analysis.

Nonspecific protein adsorption on the channel walls is a frequently encountered problem in microfluidic chips, resulting in substantial sample loss and low device performance. However, the molecular mechanisms underlying strong interaction of proteins with solid surfaces are largely unknown. Here, we studied the spontaneous adsorption of an ionic