Femtosecond Laser Patterning of the Biopolymer Chitosan for Biofilm Formation

Abstract

Controlling microbial growth is crucial for many biomedical, pharmaceutical and food industry applications. In this paper, we used a femtosecond laser to microstructure the surface of chitosan, a biocompatible polymer that has been explored for applications ranging from antimicrobial action to drug delivery. The influence of energy density on the features produced on chitosan was investigated by optical and atomic force microscopies. An increase in the hydrophilic character of the chitosan surface was attained upon laser micromachining. Patterned chitosan films were used to observe Staphylococcus aureus (ATCC 25923) biofilm formation, revealing an increase in the biofilm formation in the structured regions. Our results indicate that fs-laser micromachining is an attractive option to pattern biocompatible surfaces, and to investigate basic aspects of the relationship between surface topography and bacterial adhesion.

Insight and Recent Advances into the Role of Topography on the Cell Differentiation and Proliferation on Biopolymeric Surfaces

“…Moreover, SEM can be employed to study the effect of substrate stiffness or biofunctionalization on proliferation and differentiation of Scanning electron microscopy is a technique that uses a focused beam of electrons to scan a desired sample while detecting the emitted secondary electrons. Characteristics of various types of materials can be identified, including but not limited to surface relief microstructures developed on chitin-derived biopolymers [114], the surface morphology of porous biopolymer nanofibers [107], rough nanostructures [110], as well as many other (biodegradable) structures [20,21,52,111,[115][116][117][118][119][120][121]. With SEM, specimens are observed in a vacuum, therefore the studied biological samples are required to be dry and fixed on a hard substrate.…”

Biomimetic Hierarchical Structuring of PLA by Ultra-Short Laser Pulses for Processing of Tissue Engineered Matrices: Study of Cellular and Antibacterial Behavior

“…The group of Alves et al for example showed experimentally that Fs laser created grooves, separated by distance of 8–12 µm and with channel width in the range 0.54 µm to 1.33 µm favor S. aureus adhesion. A further increase in surface roughness did not favor the bacteria adhesion and biofilm formation [ 51 ]. It is reported by other research groups that an intact bacteria biofilm occurred much faster when the surface roughness was greater than 0.8 μm as the contact area between the bacteria cell and the surface is increased [ 52 , 53 ].…”

Flexible sensors on polymide fabricated by femtosecond laser for integration in fiber reinforced polymers

“…Hence, the rapid prototyping is still restricted by the long production time which leads to high costs. Laser-assisted microfabrication techniques have been thoroughly investigated in the literature as a promising alternative for microsystems [22] and microfluidic systems [19][20][21][22]. Furthermore, ultrafast laser beams have been successfully employed in the fabrication of thin film optoelectronics and sensors [28,29].…”