Electric field controlled electrospray deposition for precise particle pattern and cell pattern formation

Abstract

in Wiley Online Library (wileyonlinelibrary.com).Photolithography, soft lithography, and ink jetting have been used for automated micropattern fabrication. However, most of the methods for microfabrication of surface pattern are limited to the investigation of material properties of substrates with high-cost and complex procedures. In the present study, we show a simple (single-step) yet versatile and robust approach to generate biodegradable polymeric particle patterns on a substrate using electrospray deposition through a mask. Various particle patterns including patterned dots, circles, squares, and bands can be easily formed and the features of particle patterns could also be tailored using different masks and electrostatic focusing effects. Furthermore, cell patterns can be achieved on the surface of particle patterns by blocking the areas without particle deposition on the substrate and culturing cells on the substrate. Polymeric particle patterns and cell patterns developed in this study could be used in the high throughput screening of sustained release formulations, cell-based sensing, and drug discovery. In addition to experimental results, an analysis of the associated electric field is used to investigate quantitatively the nature of focusing effect. Scaling analysis is also applied to obtain the dominate terms in electrospray deposition process.

Electrohydrodynamic atomization: A two-decade effort to produce and process micro-/nanoparticulate materials

“…They further demonstrated the generation of 3D assembly of nanoparticles with ordered arrays by extending electrospraying deposition time (Lee et al, 2011a). In a separate study, Xie et al (2010) developed a simpler method to generate “electrostatic focusing effect” by directly applying a high voltage to the mask (Fig. 4).…”

“…The body forces include buoyancy force and image force, which is due to the electric force between charged particles and the induced charges on the surface of a conductive collector. The details of the closures for aforementioned forces in the modeling of the charged particle deposition can be found in the literature (Jung et al, 2010; Sigmond, 1982; Xie et al, 2010) and are not reproduced here for brevity of presentation.…”

“…(c, d) Optical phase contrast and (e, f) fluorescence microcopy images of FITC-polystyrene nanoparticle patterns fabricated under different potential differences between mask and substrate: 0 V (c, e) and 2 kV (d, f) (reprinted from Xie et al, 2010. Copyright 2010 John Wiley & Sons, Inc.).…”

Self-assembled Monolayers and Nanocomposite Hydrogels of Functional Nanomaterials for Tissue Engineering Applications

“…[95] Cell adhesion, proliferation, differentiation, and cellular patterning on non-patterned or patterned SAMs of NMs have been described in other reports as well (please see Refs. [96][97][98][99][100][101][102][103][104][105][106][107][108][109][110][111][112][113][114][115] ).…”

Area-selective deposition of charged particles derived from colloidal aerosol droplets on a surface with different hydrophilic levels

“…The charged areas were generated by a technique which had used a flexible and conductive electrode to pattern electrons and holes in a thin-film electret. Xie et al (2010) investigated a single step to generate polymeric particles with patterns of dots, circles, squares, and bands on the substrate using deposition of charged aerosol particles through a mask.…”