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。这对医疗植入物社区具有巨大的潜力，在那里，生物兼容金属的表面可以被功能化，部分可以加速医疗植入物在体内的愈合和整合。我们的工业合作伙伴Plamionique 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的解决方案，并希望找到能够提供适用于该医疗植入物市场的特定基于等离子的工艺的解决方案。该项目的主要目标是使用等离子技术使生物兼容的金属表面(钛合金和不锈钢)具有纤维粘连蛋白的功能，纤维粘连蛋白是一种通常由身体产生的蛋白质，用于促进伤口愈合。为了确定功能化是否成功以及确定改性金属表面的稳定性，颜色标记(使用荧光标记)是一种常见的技术。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表征方面的专业知识，对纤维粘连蛋白功能化的常见可植入金属表面进行成像，这些表面通过不同的等离子体工艺进行修改，并使用彩色标记进行标记。他的光学实验室配备了独特和最先进的多光子/近红外显微镜/高光谱成像仪，将能够快速获得改良表面的二维彩色图像。根据这些颜色图，可以优化等离子体条件。

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.