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。在不改变理想的整体性质的情况下对材料表面进行改性在生物技术应用中尤其重要，因为它们决定了生物分子与材料的相互作用。界面的性质，特别是它的化学成分，可以被定制以增强或阻止生物相互作用。在过去的几十年里，所谓的冷等离子体(热力学非平衡)在这种背景下得到了广泛的研究，出现了各种表面改性和沉积技术，使得能够制备具有特定性质的表面。其性质范围从促进生物分子和/或细胞的黏附，到抑制生物污垢，到控制细胞表型。这项提案提出了一项为期五年的研究计划，旨在开发用于生物医学应用的功能薄有机涂层，该涂层由冷等离子体和真空紫外线工艺制备。由于健康科学和材料科学之间的“交叉受精”，这一领域的研究日益活跃。此外，尽管沉积技术的发展仍然是一个重要的研究途径，但开发能够成功应用这些技术的表征工具也同样至关重要。通过同时获得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)开发和改进涂层技术，使其能够针对特定应用制备化学定义明确的表面；ii)开发新的表征技术，以增强我们对表面化学的了解；iii)更好地了解细胞与功能表面之间的相互作用，以及潜在的黏附机制；iv)合成具有对特定细胞类型具有选择性的黏附特性的表面。

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.