• Menzies, Donna
• Charles, Christine
• Birbilis, Nick
• Fong, Celesta
• Mcfarland, Gail
• Mclean, Keith
• Gengenbach, Thomas
• Johnson, Graham
• Muir, Benjamin Ward
• Forsythe, John

Abstract

We describe a new technique based on plasma enhanced chemical vapour deposition (PECVD) which allows the substrate independent micropatterning of multifunctional, selective surface chemistries in a single step without solvents. In this ‘top down’ method a patterned upper electrode is used to generate a non-uniform radio-frequency glow discharge in which the deposition of plasma species can be controlled to produce surface chemical patterned thin films. We used a simple model of the glow discharge using argon cross sections in an attempt to describe our experimental observations of the formation of the patterned plasma polymer film surface chemistries and to estimate the main plasma parameters (sheath potential and thickness, plasma density and potential, electron temperature and Debye length). We illustrate the versatility of this technique with several examples including the controlled adhesion of proteins, site specific chemical reactions and attachment and geometric confinement of cells. This multifunctional micropatterning technique has broad applicability in the fields of cell biology, tissue engineering and biomedical science.

Topics

• Deposition
• density
• impedance spectroscopy
• surface
• polymer
• thin film