Plasma‐Aided Micro‐ and Nanopatterning Processes for Biomedical Applications

Abstract Summary: Micro‐ and nanofabrication methods are essential today in microelectronics, optoelectronics, catalysis, and analytics. Recent advances in biomaterials show that micro‐ and nanofeatures, either at the surface or embedded in materials, can drive specific responses both in in vivo and in vitro biological systems. With such an approach, scientists can understand better, and possibly exploit, biological responses stimulated by properly designed biomedical surfaces. Because of their versatility, plasma treatment, deposition, and etching processes are often part of procedures optimized to create micro‐ and nanofeatures of different shape, size, and position, onto and inside materials. Presented here are recent examples of such processes developed in our group for biomedical applications. Residuals of self‐assembled polystyrene (PS) beads (600 ± 50 nm in diameter) on NH 3 plasma‐treated PS substrate, after O 2 plasma etching. magnified image Residuals of self‐assembled polystyrene (PS) beads (600 ± 50 nm in diameter) on NH 3 plasma‐treated PS substrate, after O 2 plasma etching.