Development of Thin Organic Coatings for Biomedical Applications

聚合物的表面改性在技术应用的出现和完善中起着关键作用。在不改变理想体积特性的情况下对材料表面进行修饰在生物技术应用中具有特别重要的意义，因为它们决定了生物分子与材料的相互作用。界面的性质，特别是它的化学性质可以被调整来增强或阻止生物相互作用。在过去的几十年里，所谓的“冷”（热力学非平衡）等离子体在这方面得到了广泛的研究，各种表面改性和沉积技术已经出现，允许制备具有选定性能的表面。其特性范围从促进生物分子和/或细胞的粘附，到抑制生物污垢，到控制细胞表型。本文提出了一项为期五年的研究计划，旨在开发以冷等离子体和真空紫外工艺制备的功能薄有机涂层，以用于生物医学应用。由于保健科学和材料科学之间的“相互促进”，这一研究领域日益活跃。此外，尽管沉积技术的发展仍然是必不可少的研究途径，但开发表征工具以使其成功应用也同样至关重要。通过同时获取可用于各种应用的材料设计和优化的数据，这些工具将鼓励化学家，工程师，物理学家，生物学家和医生之间的多学科对话。更确切地说，本建议旨在实现以下目标：i)发展和改进涂层技术，使其能够制备化学上定义明确的表面，以适应特定的应用；ii)发展新的表征技术以增强我们对表面化学的理解；iii)更好地理解细胞与功能表面之间的相互作用，以及潜在的粘附机制；iv)对特定细胞类型具有选择性的粘附特性的表面的合成。

Surface modification of polymers plays a key role in the emergence and refinement of technological applications. The modification of a material's surface without altering desirable bulk properties is of particular importance in bio-technological application as they determine the biomolecule's interaction with the material. The nature of the interface and, in particular, its chemistry can be tailored to enhance or deter biological interactions. So-called "cold" (thermodynamically non-equilibrium) plasmas have been investigated extensively in this context over the past few decades, and various surface modification and deposition techniques have emerged, permitting the preparation of surfaces with selected properties. The properties range from promoting the adhesion of biomolecules and / or cells, to suppression of biofouling, to the control of cellular phenotypes. This proposal presents a five-year research program on the development of functional thin organic coatings, prepared by cold plasma and vacuum ultraviolet processes aimed at biomedical applications. This field of research is increasingly active, on account of "cross-fertilization" between the health- and materials sciences. Furthermore, although the development of deposition techniques continues to be an essential research avenue, it is also of equally utmost importance to develop characterization tools that will enable their successful application. By simultaneously obtaining data that can be used in the design and optimization of materials for various applications, those tools will encourage a multidisciplinary dialogue amongst chemists, engineers, physicists, biologists and physicians. More precisely, the present proposal aims at achieving the following objectives: i) Development and improvement of coating technologies that enable the preparation of chemically well-defined surfaces, tailored towards specific applications; ii) Development of new characterization techniques to enhance our understanding of the surface chemistry; iii) Better understanding of the interactions between cells and functional surfaces, and of the underlying adhesion mechanisms; iv) Synthesis of surfaces with adhesion properties that are selective towards specific cell types.