Breath figures in tissue engineering and drug delivery: State-of-the-art and future perspectives

Hierarchical Functionalized Polymeric‐Ceramic Coatings on Mg‐Ca Alloys for Biodegradable Implant Applications

“…For this purpose, PCL was selected (this polymer is FDA‐approved and biodegradable) and in order to provide surface microstructuration, we resorted to the use of the BFs. This methodology takes advantage of the water vapor condensation during the evaporation of a polymeric solution to produce porous surfaces with controlled pore dimensions and distributions . The preparation of BFs is usually carried out by deposition of a polymer solution onto a substrate followed by evaporation on a moist atmosphere obtained either in a closed vessel chamber or by using a humid air flow.…”

“…Different studies have determined that the combination of the porous substrates with other materials result in a biomaterial with enhanced properties for different application as in bone regeneration. More specifically, porous films form by BF method have been reported to improve cell adhesion to the biomaterial as a consequence of adsorption of ECM proteins, modulated topography or improved cell entrapment within the pores, as well as the mechanical properties or substance flow through the material …”

“…When the solvent evaporates, the temperature of the solvent–air interface decreases and water vapor condensation occurs obtaining the formation of ordered water droplets arrays at the solution–air interface. If the surface is not wetted by the vapor, moisture condenses on the cold surface forming water droplets that grow during the evaporation giving rise to distinct water droplet arrangements on the surface . Diverse experimental aspects have been described to influence the final porosity organization including the relative humidity, the type of solvent and the polymer characteristics including the polymer architecture and polymer molecular weight .…”

“…As a result, the pore size, pore shape, distribution and also the chemical functional groups present in the pores and their distribution are among the chemical and physical aspects that can be straightforwardly varied by the BFs approach. More interestingly, the breath figures surface topography has been described to interact with cell surface integrins and to influence cell proliferation, migration and differentiation processes …”

Honeycomb-patterned porous films fabricated via self-organization of Tb complex-loaded amphiphilic copolymers

“…Aer the evaporation of water and solvent, the ordered hexagonal lattice comes into being in order to reduce the free energy. 10,11 Aerward, countless important studies have been reported on porous lms including the hole pattern formation mechanism, [12][13][14][15] choice, design and synthesis of polymers, [16][17][18][19][20][21] effect of solvent and substrate, 22,23 environment conditions, 19,21 the reprocessing methods and applications [1][2][3][4][5][6][7][8][24][25][26] and so on. Although the hole pattern formation mechanism is not completely understood at present, this method is known to require precise control over the processing environment conditions, and the polymers used in BFM usually have to be specially designed and synthesized in order to obtain a good quality in pore size and distribution.…”