Micropatterning of Mammalian Cells on Plasma Polymerized Polypyrrole Thin Films

Microscaled patterns have been used to construct exquisite intelligent biomaterials and can be applied in tissue engineering to create different biological signals and modulate cell behavior. This study proposed to create micropatterns for cell attachment and proliferation by combining 3-D printed mask with the plasma polymerized pyrrole (ppPy) on an antifouling polymer-modified substrate. The antifouling moieties selected in this study are the zwitterionic molecules of sulfobetaine methacrylate (SBMA) copolymerized with acrylic acid (AAc). The cell-pattern interactions were facilitated by cultivating L-929 mouse fibroblasts on the substrates with the well-defined chemical features providing by the multilayers composed of plasma polymers and zwitterionic copolymers. The results showed that both the attachment and proliferation of L-929 fibroblast cells were excellently confined within the ppPy functionalized patterns. Moreover, the cell density per unit area increased as a function of the ppPy deposition time, indicating cell proliferation was modulated by amine functionality. This study provides an alternative method to pattern biomolecules using plasma deposition which could be further applied in fields of biomaterials and biosensing.