Gradient Technology for High-Throughput Screening of Interactions between Cells and Nanostructured Materials

Copyright © 2012 Andrew Michelmore et al. This is an open access article distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.We present a novel substrate suitable for the high-throughput analysis of cell response to variations in surface chemistry and nanotopography. Electrochemical etching was used to produce silicon wafers with nanopores between 10 and 100 nm in diameter. Over this substrate and flat silicon wafers, a gradient film ranging from hydrocarbon to carboxylic acid plasma polymer was deposited, with the concentration of surface carboxylic acid groups varying between 0.7 and 3% as measured by XPS. MG63 osteoblast-like cells were then cultured on these substrates and showed greatest cell spreading and adhesion onto porous silicon with a carboxylic acid group concentration between 2-3%. This method has great potential for high-throughput screening of cell-material interaction with particular relevance to tissue engineering