Fabrication of Micropatterned Stimulus‐Responsive Polymer‐Brush ‘Anemone’

Abstract

A simple strategy to fabricate stimulus‐responsive patterned PNIPAAM‐brush microstructures (‘anemones’) is presented. The size of the microstructures can be adjusted by setting the composition of thiol and the contact pressure. We demonstrate that the patterned PNIPAAM‐brush microstructures have a triggerable and reversible conformation transition, and can potentially be used as microcontainers to reversibly dock and release microparticles.

The biocompatibility of titanium cardiovascular devices seeded with autologous blood-derived endothelial progenitor cells

“…Ti/ TiO 2 -coated samples were rinsed with 2 % sodium duodecyl sulfate solution followed by 30 rinses in deionized water, then dried under a stream of nitrogen, and imaged (using contact mode) in air with a V-shaped silicon nitride cantilever (Nanoprobe, Veeco, spring constant 0.12 N/m; tip radius 20-60 nm) with a MultiMode atomic force microscope (Digital Instruments) [11]. The roughness (R q ) was determined with Nanoscope 3 software according to equation (1) [12], $$R_q=\sqrt{\frac{1}{n}\underset{i=1}{\overset{n}{\Sigma }}{y}_i^2}$$ where n is the number of measurements and y i is the vertical distance from the calculated mean line to the i th measurement.…”

In Situ Characterization of Thermo‐Responsive Poly(N‐Isopropylacrylamide) Films with Sum‐Frequency Generation Spectroscopy

“…The polymer chains exhibit temperature-dependent solvation behaviour in which they become less solvated with increasing temperature. This results in a thermo-responsive behaviour leading to applications in the areas of biointerfaces, [1][2][3][4][5][6] drug delivery systems, [7][8][9][10][11] permeation-controlled filters, [12] and functional composite surfaces. [13][14][15] In addition to bulk applications, pNIPAM films can be attached to a solid support by methods including atom transfer radical polymerization (ATRP), [16][17][18] initiated either by UV light [19] or by electron beam radiation.…”

Dynamic Microcontact Printing for Patterning Polymer‐Brush Microstructures

“…Zhou et al14 described a general μCP route to pattern laterally distinctive multicomponent polymer brushes involving a repeated printing process following a deactivated step of previous polymer‐brush activity, which enabled the “synthesis” of very complex polymer surfaces 23. We have previously reported that egg‐cup‐shaped polymer‐brush microstructures could be obtained using a circular cylindrical PDMS stamp with various printing conditions and multistep μCP 24. More recently, we used the extended μCP strategies exploited by previous reports15–17 and combined with subsequent SIP to fabricate further new polymer‐brush microstructures that differ from the original stamp feature by varying the μCP conditions 25…”

“…SI‐ATRP : The polymer brushes were synthesized according to our previous report with a slight modification 24. Briefly, the poly­merization solution was prepared by adding a water (with a little amount of MeOH for speeding the dissolution of monomer) solution of NIPAAM monomer to an organometallic catalyst.…”