Polydimethylsiloxane (PDMS) is widely used as a cell culture platform to produce micro- and nano-technology based microdevices. However, the native PDMS surface is not suitable for cell adhesion and is always subject to bacterial pollution and cancer cell invasion. Coating the PDMS surface with antibacterial or anticancer materials often causes considerable harm to the non-cancer mammalian cells on it. We have developed a method to fabricate a biocompatible PDMS surface which not only promotes non-cancer mammalian cell growth but also has antibacterial and anticancer activities, by coating the PDMS surface with a Chinese herb extract, paeonol. Coating changes the wettability and the elemental composition of the PDMS surface. Molecular dynamic simulation indicates that the absorption of paeonol onto the PDMS surface is an energy favourable process. The paeonol-coated PDMS surface exhibits good antibacterial activity against both Gram-positive and Gram-negative bacteria. Moreover considerable antibacterial activity is maintained after the coated surface is rinsed or incubated in water. The coated PDMS surface inhibits bacterial growth on the contact surface and promotes non-cancer mammalian cell growth with low cell toxicity; meanwhile the growth of cancer cells is significantly inhibited. Our study will potentially guide PDMS surface modification approaches to produce biomedical devices.
We report evaporation of ethanol/water mixture droplets on both pillar-arrayed and micro-holed polydimethylsiloxane (PDMS) surfaces. Analysis of wettability shows that (i) when the pillar-to-pillar spacing is 5 μm, the pillar-arrayed PDMS surfaces are Cassie-Baxter-wetted; (ii) when the pillar-to-pillar spacing is 20 or 50 μm, part of each pillar-arrayed surface is Cassie-Baxter-wetted while the other part Wenzel-wetted; (iii) all micro-holed PDMS surfaces are Cassie-Baxter-wetted; (iv) the advancing and receding contact angles increase with the increase of the pillar-to-pillar spacing, while they decrease with the increase of the hole-to-hole spacing. The investigation on evaporation of mixture droplets demonstrates that (i) evaporation on pillar-arrayed PDMS first proceeds with constant contact radius mode (CCR) due to the strong adhesion between the surface and the droplet; (ii) on micro-holed surfaces CCR stage is also observed for the surface with the hole-to-hole spacing of 5 μm, while it is not found at high ethanol concentration for surfaces with the hole-to-hole spacings of 20 μm and 50 μm, which is attributed to the weak adhesion between the micro-holed surfaces and the droplet. Finally, the evolution of droplet volume and its two-third power are discussed.