Mechanically stable anti-adhesive polymer surfaces by biomimetic structuring

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Avoiding bacterial settlement is important for materials applied in biomedical technology. Mimicking naturally occurring surfaces offers promising solutions to meet this requirement. Starting from the non-wetting, anti-adhesive and mechanically stable skin of collembola (springtails) we propose to apply nanoreplication and laser interference lithography to create polymer surfaces with similar characteristics. Nanoreplicas that contain the hierarchical topography of the cuticle shall be applied to investigate the impact of the nanoscale structural elements and the chemical surface composition on their anti-adhesive behavior. Laser interference lithography shall be used to recapitulate arrays of individual structural elements of the skin in varying dimensions and shapes. The characteristics of the structured polymer surfaces shall be quantitatively analyzed with respect to wetting, protein adsorption and settlement of different types of bacteria. Detailed investigations of the initial bacterial adhesion (using, e.g., adhesion force measurements, combined with the detection of molecular components of the bacterial matrix) and colonization on the structured materials shall be performed to draw general conclusions on factors that influence bacterial adhesion at artificial surfaces. Based on that, principle solutions shall be developed to scale up effective surface structures for materials applied in medical devices.