Polymer cell culture substrates with micropatterned carbon nanotubes

Marcus T. Eliason, Erik O. Sunden, Andrew H. Cannon, Samuel Graham, Andrés J. García, William Paul King

Research output: Contribution to journalArticlepeer-review

Abstract

This article presents study of the interactions between cells and micropatterned carbon nanotubes on a polymer cell culture substrate. The polymer substrates with patterned carbon nanotubes were fabricated using an imprint process, whereby the nanotubes were pressed into a polymer layer at high temperature. The patterned substrates featured 28 different nanotube patterns of microscale lanes and circles, where the feature sizes ranged from 9 to 76 μm. Osteoblast-like cells were seeded on the substrates and cell alignment was quantified via fluorescent and electron microscopy. Many patterns were fabricated on each polymer substrate, allowing 28 different experiments on each cell culture substrate, which were tested over 10,000 cells. The cell response to the patterned nanotubes showed a maximum alignment to the microlane patterns of 55 ± 6% and no significant alignment to microcircle patterns. This work enables the study of cell response to a wider range of patterns featuring both the micro and nano length scales.

Original languageEnglish (US)
Pages (from-to)996-1001
Number of pages6
JournalJournal of Biomedical Materials Research - Part A
Volume86
Issue number4
DOIs
StatePublished - Sep 15 2008

Keywords

  • Alignment
  • Carbon nanotubes
  • Micropatterning
  • Surface topography

ASJC Scopus subject areas

  • Ceramics and Composites
  • Biomaterials
  • Biomedical Engineering
  • Metals and Alloys

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