Biomedical Applications of Plasma-Deposited Thin Films

Plasma‐Aided Micro‐ and Nanopatterning Processes for Biomedical Applications

“…The spheres are generally made of metals, such as Ag, Au, Cr, or of a polymer, such as PS, and are commercially available dispersed in water solution. PS spheres are widely used since they can be obtained monodispersed with any diameter from 20 nm up to a few micrometers, with a wide range of surface‐grafted ionizable groups (e.g., SO 3 H, NH 3 ) that help to tune the self‐assembling process on different surfaces 40. To obtain ordered monolayers of spheres it is crucial to be able to control particle/particle and particle/substrate interactions 46,84.…”

“…Flat surfaces with the same surface chemistry as the nanopatterned ones, to be used in cell‐growth experiments as comparison, can be obtained by applying the same sputtering/etching procedure to the unmasked substrate 87. Once nanostructured substrates are obtained, a further surface chemical modification could be performed, such as a highly conformal PE‐CVD of a functional coating, in order to obtain different samples with the same topographic features and different chemistries, to be used in protein adsorption and cell‐adhesion studies 40,93. In this way different topographies characterized by only one kind of surface chemistry could be used in cell‐growth experiments, to disentangle the effect of surface chemistry from that of topography on protein adsorption and cell adhesion.…”

“…Plasma treatment, plasma‐enhanced chemical vapor deposition (PE‐CVD), and plasma etching processes are widely used in biomedical research40,41 to modify material surfaces with high versatility and precision, in a cost effective way. The most important advantage of such processes is the possibility to change the chemistry and/or topography of the surfaces with high control, without altering the bulk properties of the materials.…”

The Effect of Low Pressure Plasma Polymerization Modes on the Properties of the Deposited Plasma Polymers

“…Plasma polymerization has become a standard process in many different fields. In particular, plasma nanofilms are used not only as classical dielectric materials, but also to modify target surfaces in order to fit the requirements in various applications including biomedical technology, the food industry, and corrosion protection . Plasma‐produced polymers have also been used as adhesion promoter or in combination with other layers in multilayer stacks in the field of surface and interface engineering …”

Novel Polymeric Thin Films from Labile Lactic Acid by a Dry Process

“…For example, surface treatments by plasma‐activated organic vapors have been employed and specific functional groups, such as carboxylic acid,12, 13 hydroxyl,14 or amine,10, 11 proved to be beneficial for cell attachment and proliferation. In fact, plasma polymerization offers many technical advantages for thin film processes, such as simple processing procedures, solvent‐free environments, pinhole‐free thin films, good adhesion to virtually all substrates irrespective of substrate geometry and surface properties, and ultra‐thin film capability 15–19. Nevertheless, there have been no reports on successful attempts based on such a method for applicable organic thin films.…”