3D free-standing porous scaffolds made of graphene oxide as substrates for neural cell growth

Tailored Fringed Platforms Produced by Laser Interference for Aligned Neural Cell Growth

“…12 AE 4 nm, in good agreement with the thickness of the original rGO layer. [32] Based on these results, we can conclude that the laser exposure mostly removes the rGO layer from the transformed regions. Finally, we determined the transmittance spectra T of both ''as grown'' and patterned regions from transmission measurements (Figure 4).…”

“…[32] Then, LI was used to create tailored fringes on these substrates. Figure 2 shows optical images of a series of regions of the rGO substrate exposed to LI accumulating an increasing number of laser pulses, together with the in-situ recorded diffraction patterns.…”

“…The analysis of the surface roughness of the ''as grown'' regions leads to a root-mean-square value (rms) of 2.9 nm, in range with earlier results. [32] The thickness difference between transformed and non-transformed regions, avoiding the interface areas where the rGO layer folds over, is ca. 12 AE 4 nm, in good agreement with the thickness of the original rGO layer.…”

“…[32] The so-obtained GO powder was dried in an oven (Memmert) at 60 8C for 24 h. The aqueous GO suspension used for the preparation of substrates was obtained by dispersing 100 mg of the yellow-brown GO powder in distilled water (10 mL) under sonication for 2 h, followed by centrifugation at 3000 rpm for 20 min in a 5810R centrifuge (Eppendorf). After discarding any precipitates, a final GO concentration of ca.…”

“…This suspension was then used to produce, by spin-coating using a Spinner Pro 6000 instrument (SMA), a homogeneous coat of circular glass coverslips as previously reported (9.6 AE 1.2 nm-thick). [32] The conditions used for this procedure (e.g., GO suspension concentration, resting time of the drop, speed, and time of spinning) were optimized to guarantee reproducibility of the coating thickness. Subsequent thermal treatment at 200 8C for 30 min was required to preserve coating integrity, giving rise to rGO films on glass coverslips ( Figure 1A).…”