Parylene C topographic micropattern as a template for patterning PDMS and Polyacrylamide hydrogel

Abstract

Parylene C is a well-known polymer and it has been mainly employed as a protective layer for implantable electronics. In this paper, we propose a new approach to use Parylene C as a versatile template for patterning soft materials potentially applicable as scaffolds in cardiac tissue engineering (TE). Parylene C substrates were anisotropically patterned through standard lithographic process with hydrophilic channels separating raised hydrophobic strips. Ridges and grooves of the template are 10 µm width and depth ranging from 1 to 17 µm. Polydimethylsiloxane (PDMS) and Polyacrylamide (PAm) hydrogel have been chosen as soft polymers to be moulded. Thanks to their chemical and physical properties PDMS and PAm hydrogel mimic the extracellular matrix (ECM). PDMS was spin coated on micropatterned Parylene C obtaining composite substrates with 460 nm and 1.15 µm high grooves. The Young’s modulus of the composite Parylene C/PDMS was evaluated and it was found to be almost half when compared to PDMS. PAm hydrogel was also printed using collagen coated micro-grooved Parylene C. Optical micrographs and fluorescence analysis show the successful topographic and protein pattern transfer on the hydrogel.

Biomaterials in Tendon and Skeletal Muscle Tissue Engineering: Current Trends and Challenges

“…Topographical nano- [ 281 ] or micro-patterning have thus been investigated in grooves [ 282 ], waves [ 178 ], or more complex configurations [ 283 ] to enhance rat satellite cells or C2C12 myoblast fusion thanks to alignment and myotube formation. This approach mainly applied 2D films on to which myoblasts were cultured as monolayers until the formation of mature myotubes.…”

Fabrication and Characterization of a Magnetic Drilling Actuator for Navigation in a Three-dimensional Phantom Vascular Network

“…Therefore, parylene-coated Nd magnets were used for the developed MDA. Parylene is a biocompatible material that has been proven to improve biocompatibility in the medical and biotechnological fields 43 – 45 . In this work, MDAs with different numbers of spirals and an Nd magnet in the core were fabricated by 3D printing.…”

Effect of patterned polyacrylamide hydrogel on morphology and orientation of cultured NRVMs

“…Flat polyacrylamide covered with collagen (FPC) and grooved collagen-patterned polyacrylamide (GPC) were compared to demonstrate that the technique showed in a previous work 19 can be applied to mimic in the vitro cardiac extracellular environment and promote NRVM alignment. In this work, we describe only the fabrication of FPC since the fabrication of GPC was explained in 19 .…”

“…Flat polyacrylamide covered with collagen (FPC) and grooved collagen-patterned polyacrylamide (GPC) were compared to demonstrate that the technique showed in a previous work 19 can be applied to mimic in the vitro cardiac extracellular environment and promote NRVM alignment. In this work, we describe only the fabrication of FPC since the fabrication of GPC was explained in 19 . The spacing value of GPC (width of the ridges and grooves and depth of the grooves) was chosen as the optimum pattern for NRVMs based on the literature (i.e., 10 µm width and 1 µm deep grooves) 20 .…”

“…In that direction, we recently proposed a simple and versatile method for patterning PAm hydrogel scaffolds either topographically and biochemically using Parylene C masks 19 . Herein, we leverage this approach and demonstrate its use in NRVM culturing.…”