Materiomics B.V., Maastricht, The Netherlands.
Department of Tissue Regeneration, MIRA Institute for Biomedical Technology and Technical Medicine, University of Twente, Enschede, The Netherlands; MERLN Institute for Technology-Inspired Regenerative Medicine, Maastricht University, Maastricht, The Netherlands.
Mater Sci Eng C Mater Biol Appl. 2017 Feb 1;71:558-564. doi: 10.1016/j.msec.2016.11.004. Epub 2016 Nov 5.
Polystyrene (PS) is the most commonly used material in cell culture devices, such as Petri dishes, culture flasks and well plates. Micropatterning of cell culture substrates can significantly affect cell-material interactions leading to an increasing interest in the fabrication of topographically micro-structured PS surfaces. However, the high stiffness combined with brittleness of PS (elastic modulus 3-3.5GPa) makes high-quality patterning into PS difficult when standard hard molds, e.g. silicon and nickel, are used as templates. A new and robust scheme for easy processing of large-area high-density micro-patterning into PS film is established using nanoimprinting lithography and standard hot embossing techniques. Including an extra step through an intermediate PDMS mold alone does not result in faithful replication of the large area, high-density micropattern into PS. Here, we developed an approach using an additional intermediate mold out of OrmoStamp, which allows for high-quality and large-area micro-patterning into PS. OrmoStamp was originally developed for UV nanoimprint applications; this work demonstrates for the first time that OrmoStamp is a highly adequate material for micro-patterning of PS through hot embossing. Our proposed processing method achieves high-quality replication of micropatterns in PS, incorporating features with high aspect ratio (4:1, height:width), high density, and over a large pattern area. The proposed scheme can easily be adapted for other large-area and high-density micropatterns of PS, as well as other stiff and brittle polymers.
聚苯乙烯（PS）是细胞培养设备中最常用的材料，例如培养皿、培养瓶和微孔板。细胞培养底物的微图案化可以显著影响细胞与材料的相互作用，因此人们越来越感兴趣于制造具有形貌微结构的 PS 表面。然而，PS 的高刚性和脆性（弹性模量 3-3.5GPa）使得在使用标准硬模具（例如硅和镍）作为模板时，难以对 PS 进行高质量的图案化。本文采用纳米压印光刻和标准热压印技术，建立了一种新的、稳健的方案，可轻松对 PS 薄膜进行大面积高密度微图案化处理。仅通过中间 PDMS 模具进行额外的步骤并不能实现大面积、高密度微图案向 PS 的忠实复制。在这里，我们开发了一种使用额外的 OrmoStamp 中间模具的方法，该方法可以实现 PS 的高质量和大面积微图案化。OrmoStamp 最初是为 UV 纳米压印应用而开发的；本工作首次证明，OrmoStamp 是通过热压印对 PS 进行微图案化的一种非常合适的材料。我们提出的处理方法能够在 PS 中实现高质量的微图案复制，具有高纵横比（4:1，高度：宽度）、高密度和大面积的特征。该方案可以轻松适应 PS 以及其他刚性和脆性聚合物的其他大面积和高密度微图案。
