Document Type

Article

Publication Date

5-14-2019

Publication Title

Scientific Reports

Abstract

Poly(dimethylsiloxane) (PDMS) is likely the most popular material for microfluidic devices in lab-on-achip and other biomedical applications. However, the hydrophobicity of PDMS leads to non-specific adsorption of proteins and other molecules such as therapeutic drugs, limiting its broader use. Here, we introduce a simple method for preparing PDMS materials to improve hydrophilicity and decrease nonspecific protein adsorption while retaining cellular biocompatibility, transparency, and good mechanical properties without the need for any post-cure surface treatment. This approach utilizes smart copolymers comprised of poly(ethylene glycol) (PEG) and PDMS segments (PDMS-PEG) that, when blended with PDMS during device manufacture, spontaneously segregate to surfaces in contact with aqueous solutions and reduce the hydrophobicity without any added manufacturing steps. PDMS-PEGmodified PDMS samples showed contact angles as low as 23.6° ± 1° and retained this hydrophilicity for at least twenty months. Their improved wettability was confirmed using capillary flow experiments. Modified devices exhibited considerably reduced non-specific adsorption of albumin, lysozyme, and immunoglobulin G. The modified PDMS was biocompatible, displaying no adverse effects when used in a simple liver-on-a-chip model using primary rat hepatocytes. This PDMS modification method can be further applied in analytical separations, biosensing, cell studies, and drug-related studies.

Volume

9

DOI

https://doi.org/10.1038/s41598-019-43625-5

Rights

This article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License, which permits use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons license, and indicate if changes were made. The images or other third party material in this article are included in the article’s Creative Commons license, unless indicated otherwise in a credit line to the material. If material is not included in the article’s Creative Commons license and your intended use is not permitted by statutory regulation or exceeds the permitted use, you will need to obtain permission directly from the copyright holder. To view a copy of this license, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/.

Comments

Originally published in Scientific Reports, volume 9, Article number: 7377 (2019).

https://doi.org/10.1038/s41598-019-43625-5

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