Plasma‐Aided Micro‐ and Nanopatterning Processes for Biomedical Applications

Abstract

Summary: Micro‐ and nanofabrication methods are essential today in microelectronics, optoelectronics, catalysis, and analytics. Recent advances in biomaterials show that micro‐ and nanofeatures, either at the surface or embedded in materials, can drive specific responses both in in vivo and in vitro biological systems. With such an approach, scientists can understand better, and possibly exploit, biological responses stimulated by properly designed biomedical surfaces. Because of their versatility, plasma treatment, deposition, and etching processes are often part of procedures optimized to create micro‐ and nanofeatures of different shape, size, and position, onto and inside materials. Presented here are recent examples of such processes developed in our group for biomedical applications.

Plasma‐Assisted Approaches in Inorganic Nanostructure Fabrication

“…Thus, a unique property of cold plasmas is the high chemical reactivity in mild conditions, which is very desirable for materials processing, especially for those sensitive to heat, such as organic materials, polymers, and biomaterials. [6][7][8] Low-temperature plasmas have broad applications in film deposition, etching, and surface modifications. Plasmas with comparable temperature of heavy particles to that of electrons, i.e., T e $ T i , are known as thermal plasmas.…”

“…The concept of plasma was first proposed by Erving Langmuir in 1928. [1] In less than 100 years, plasma and plasma-related technologies have already become an indispensible part for the modern sciences and technologies that are of fundamental importance for the human being, including energy sciences, [2,3] information technologies, [4,5] life and medical science, [6][7][8] environmental sciences, [9][10][11][12][13] and materials sciences. [11][12][13][14] Concerning material preparation and processing, plasma techniques have found important applications in thin-film deposition, [15][16][17][18] etching, [4,5,14,19] and surface modifications.…”

Polyurethane coating with thin polymer films produced by plasma polymerization of diglyme

“…Therefore it is essential to perform different plasma diagnostics in order to probe the trends of chemical species as well as the electrons behavior for different plasma 3 To whom the correspondence should be addressed parameters, such as RF power coupled to the plasma chamber, gas pressure, gas flow and so on [3][4][5]9,10]. In the field of biomaterial science and technology, plasma polymerized polyethylene glycol dimethyl ether has been attracting the attention of the scientific community due to its non-fouling properties [11][12][13][14][15]. If appropriate plasma parameters are set, polymer films can be synthesized keeping quite similar molecular structure to that of polyethylene oxide-like (PEO-like) with the advantage that these films are not soluble in water.…”

Applications and challenges of plasma processes in nanobiotechnology

“…Due to their variable degree of cross-linking linked to the discharge conditions, these coatings are resistant to classical polar solvents, making them compatible with almost all standard patterning techniques including lift-off processes [39,40,41], but can also be selectively dissolved upon request. Plasma polymers can be then assembled in structures with sub-micron dimensions by combination of colloidal lithography [39,44], deposition and etching, or as well as by direct modifications by electron beam lithography.…”