AVS 53rd International Symposium
    Plasma Science and Technology Thursday Sessions
       Session PS1+BI-ThM

Paper PS1+BI-ThM5
RF(13.56MHz) Glow Discharges fed with Acrylic Acid and Allylamine vapours to obtain Functional Coatings for Biomedical Applications

Thursday, November 16, 2006, 9:20 am, Room 2009

Session: Plasmas in Bioscience
Presenter: P. Favia, University of Bari, Italy
Authors: E. Sardella, University of Bari, Italy
P. Favia, University of Bari, Italy
L. Petrone, University of Bari, Italy
M. Nardulli, University of Bari, Italy
R. Gristina, IMIP-CNR, Italy
R. d'Agostino, University of Bari, Italy
Correspondent: Click to Email
Today, a broad range of plasma processes is used to control cell adhesion and growth on biomaterials for tissue engineering and manufacturing of biomedical devices. N-@footnote 1@ and O-@footnote 2@ groups are considered very attractive because they are able to improve cell adhesion and function as "anchor" sites for biomolecules immobilization.@footnote 3@ In this work plasma deposition of acrylic acid (AA), allylamine (AAm) vapours and their plasma co-polymerization have been carried out to deposit functional coatings for several kind of biomedical applications. In particular AA/AAm co-polymerisation can provide different "anchor" sites usable for grafting biomolecules with different activities (ex. antibacterial vs. eukaryotic cell-adhesiveness) on the same substrate. Moreover, these coatings can exhibit zwitterionic characteristics in water and they may find utility in the separation of proteins from solution. A correlation between surface diagnostic analyses (XPS, WCA, FTIR) and plasma phase characterizations (AOES) allowed to provide a correlation between relative density trends of the emitting species in the plasma and the chemical-physical properties of the modified substrate. A titration with water solutions at different pH allowed picking out acid/base properties of the films that can render them very attractive both as supports for cell adhesion and as "smart"materials in drug delivery approaches. In vitro cell culturing of 3T3 fibroblast cell line, were performed to assess the ability of such kind of coatings to influence cell adhesion and growth. Acknowledgements MIUR-FIRB RBNE012B2K is gratefully acknowledged for the financial support. @FootnoteText@ @footnote 1@A. Harsch et al. Journal of neuroscience methods, 2000;98:135-144@footnote 2@Detomaso et al. Biomaterials 2005; 26-18: 3831-3841@footnote 3@D.A. Puleo et al. Biomaterials, 2002;23:2079-2087.