Plasma Enhanced CVD System for Polymer Coating Deposition on Tubular Tiny Medical Devices

心血管支架是一种插入血管的小装置，用于防止因血管疾病引起的局部血流限制。不幸的是，目前的商用设备经常出现失败或临床并发症。因此，本课题的重点是设计一种用于支架表面改性的创新功能材料。此外，该工艺被设计成易于转移到许多生物医学应用中，其中功能涂层寻求改善临床性能。更准确地说，我们的目标是设计表面修饰，从而开发基于聚合物的高粘附性和内聚性的支架纳米涂层。聚合物涂层是局部控制药物释放的潜在解决方案，它们也可以作为金属支架释放潜在有毒金属离子的屏障。此外，它们可以作为载体来接枝生物分子，这些生物分子被广泛研究以改善材料与生物系统的相互作用。一项具有挑战性的任务是给材料涂上复杂的几何形状，如支架，并确定它们的机械和生物性能。总的来说，这些新的纳米涂层应该有助于改善支架的临床性能，从而对加拿大和全球医疗保健的质量和成本产生积极影响。

Cardiovascular stents are small devices inserted into blood vessels to prevent localized flow restriction due to vascular diseases. Unfortunately, failure or clinical complications are often observed with the current commercial devices. Therefore, the proposed project focuses on designing an innovative functional material for surface modification of stents. Furthermore, the process is designed to be easily transferable to a number of biomedical applications where functional coatings seek to improve clinical performances. More precisely, our aim is to design surface modifications allowing the development of polymer-based highly adherent and cohesive nano-coatings for stents. Polymer coatings are potential solutions for locally controlled drug release and they can also act as barrier for potentially toxic metallic ions release by metallic stents. Moreover, they can be used as carriers to graft biomolecules that are largely studied to improve the interaction of materials with the biological system. A challenging task is to coat materials with complex geometries like stents and to determine their mechanical and biological performances. Overall, these new nano-coatings should contribute to improve the clinical performances of stents and therefore impact positively the quality and cost of healthcare in Canada and around the globe.