Journal
JOURNAL OF BIOMEDICAL MATERIALS RESEARCH PART A
Volume 108, Issue 5, Pages 1223-1230Publisher
WILEY
DOI: 10.1002/jbm.a.36896
Keywords
human dermal fibroblast alignment; liquid crystal elastomer substrates; nanotopography
Funding
- Office of Sciences, DOE [DE-SC0019105]
- U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) [DE-SC0019105] Funding Source: U.S. Department of Energy (DOE)
Ask authors/readers for more resources
Control of cells behavior through topography of substrates is an important theme in biomedical applications. Among many materials used as substrates, polymers show advantages since they can be tailored by chemical functionalization. Fabrication of polymer substrates with nano- and microscale topography requires processing by lithography, microprinting, etching, and so forth. In this work, we introduce a different approach based on anisotropic elastic properties of polymerized smectic A (SmA) liquid crystal elastomer (LCE). When the SmA liquid crystal coating is deposited onto a substrate with planar alignment of the molecules, it develops nanogrooves at its free surface. After photopolymerization, these nanogrooves show an excellent ability to align human dermal fibroblasts over large areas. The alignment quality is good for both bare SmA LCE substrates and for substrates coated with fibronectin. The SmA LCE nano-topographies show a high potential for tissue engineering.
Authors
I am an author on this paper
Click your name to claim this paper and add it to your profile.
Reviews
Recommended
No Data Available