Plasma Assisted Functionalization of Surgical Grade Metallic Surfaces

等离子体技术在生物材料工程中的一个重要应用是能够使不同的表面功能化以接枝特定的蛋白质或分子。这对于医疗植入体领域具有巨大的潜力，生物相容性金属的表面可以被功能化，从而加速医疗植入体在体内的愈合和整合。我们的工业合作伙伴Plasmionique Inc.是一家加拿大公司，其使命是为表面工程问题开发和商业化基于等离子体的解决方案，并希望找到可以为医疗植入物市场领域提供特定等离子体工艺的解决方案。该项目的主要目标是利用等离子体技术用纤维连接蛋白功能化生物相容性金属表面（钛合金和不锈钢），纤维连接蛋白是人体通常产生的一种蛋白质，可以加速伤口愈合。为了确定功能化是否成功以及确定修饰金属表面的稳定性，颜色标记（带有荧光标签）是一种常用技术。Plasmionique没有执行这项任务的技术或概念经验。因此，这个为期六个月的Engage项目的主要目标是利用Vetrone教授和他的团队在材料光学特性方面的专业知识，对纤维连接蛋白功能化的普通植入式金属表面进行成像，这些金属表面经过不同的等离子体工艺修饰，并带有彩色标记。他的光学实验室配备了独特的、最先进的多光子/近红外显微镜/高光谱成像仪，能够快速获得修饰表面的二维彩色图像。基于这些彩色图，等离子体条件可以得到优化。

An important application of plasma technology to biomaterial engineering is the ability to functionalize diverse surfaces for the grafting of specific proteins or molecules. This has great potential for the medical implant community where the surface of biocompatible metals could be functionalized with moieties that could accelerate healing and integration of the medical implants in the body. Our industrial partner, Plasmionique Inc., is a Canadian company with the mission to develop and commercialize plasma based solutions for surface engineering problems and wishes to find solutions that could offer specific plasma based processes applied to this medical implant market sector.The main objective of this project is to use plasma technology to functionalize biocompatible metal surfaces (titanium alloy and stainless steel) with fibronectin, a protein commonly produced by body to accelerate wound healing. To determine if the functionalization was successful as well as identify the stability of the modified metal surface, color marking (with fluorescent tags) is a common technique. Plasmionique does not have the technical or conceptual experience to carry out this task.Hence, the main goal of this six-month Engage project is to capitalize on the expertise of Professor Vetrone and his team on the optical characterization of materials to image the fibronectin functionalized common implantable metal surfaces modified by diverse plasma processes and tagged with color markers. His optical laboratory is equipped with a unique and state-of-the-art multiphoton/near-infrared microscope/hyperspectral imager that will be able to rapidly obtain two-dimensional color images of the modified surfaces. Based on these color maps, the plasma conditions can then be optimized.