Retention of bacteria on a substratum surface with micro-patterned hydrophobicity

Abstract

Bacteria adhere to almost any surface, despite continuing arguments about the importance of physico-chemical properties of substratum surfaces, such as hydrophobicity and charge in biofilm formation. Nevertheless, in vivo biofilm formation on teeth and also on voice prostheses in laryngectomized patients is less on hydrophobic than on hydrophilic surfaces. With the aid of micro-patterned surfaces consisting of 10-Wm wide hydrophobic lines separated by 20-Wm wide hydrophilic spacings, we demonstrate here, for the first time in one and the same experiment, that bacteria do not have a strong preference for adhesion to hydrophobic or hydrophilic surfaces. Upon challenging the adhering bacteria, after deposition in a parallel plate flow chamber, with a high detachment force, however, bacteria were easily wiped-off hydrophobic lines, most notably when these lines were oriented parallel to the direction of flow. Adhering bacteria detached slightly less from the hydrophilic spacings in between, but preferentially accumulated adhering on the hydrophilic regions close to the interface between the hydrophilic spacings and hydrophobic lines. It is concluded that substratum hydrophobicity is a major determinant of bacterial retention while it hardly influences bacterial adhesion. ß

The role of cell-surface interactions in bacterial initial adhesion and consequent biofilm formation on nanofiltration/reverse osmosis membranes

“…The link between initial adhesion and biofilm detachment is due to the adhesive bond between the mature biofilm and the surface, where this adhesive force is governed by the same physicochemical forces that cause initial adhesion [127]. A study by Bos et al [128] concluded that substratum hydrophobicity is a major determinant of bacterial detachment under high shear forces. It is therefore clear that an understanding of bacterial-surface interactions may play an important role in biofouling detachment, and hence control.…”

Surface modification of stainless steel by plasma-based fluorine and silver dual ion implantation and deposition

“…Several reports showed that bacterial adhesion decreased with the increasing contact angle of the solid surfaces and the decreasing surface energy of the substrate surfaces 18,20,41,42) . Some research found that bacteria adhered to the hydrophobic materials could be more easily removed by an air-bubble jet 43,44) . It was also reported that there exists direct the relationship between the contact angle and the antibacterial property of various fluorideimplanted stainless steel 18,20) .…”

Influence of nanophase titania topography on bacterial attachment and metabolism

“…Bacterial adhesion is, thus, affected by surface properties (Litzler et al 2007;Schildhauer et al 2007) such as hydrophobicity (Schackenraad et al 1992;Bos et al 2000;Karakeçili and Gümü derelioglu 2002), hydrophilicity (Kiss et al 1996;Gomez-Suarez et al 2002), steric hindrance (Kuhl et al 1994;Rijnaarts et al 1999), and surface roughness (Medilanski et al 2002;Whitehead et al 2006). There is a positive correlation between protein adsorption and short-term bacterial attachment with surface property changes (Cunliffe et al 2003).…”