Improvement of Polypropylene Biological Interactions by using Superhydrophobic Surface Modification

Abstract

The significance of producing superhydrophobic surfaces through modification of surface chemistry and structure is in preventing or delaying biofilm formation. This is done to improve biocompatibility and chemical and biological properties of the surface by creating micro-nano multilevel rough structure; and to decrease surface free energy by Fault Tolerant Control Strategy (FTCS) . Here, we produced a superhydrophobic surface through TiO2 coating and flurosilanization methods. Then, in order to evaluate the physicochemical properties of the modified surfaces, they were characterized by Scanning Electron Microscope (SEM), Fourier Transform Infrared Spectroscopy (FTIR), Contact Angle (CA), cell viability assay (using Hela and MCF-7 cancer cell lines as well as non-cancerous human fibroblast cells) by MTT, Bovine Serum Abumin (BSA) protein adsorption using Bradford and bacterial adhesion assay (Staphylococcus aureus and Staphylococcus epidermidis) using microtiter. Results showed that contact angle and surface energey of superhydrophobic modified surface increased to 150° and decreased to 5.51 mj/m2, respectively due to physicochemical modifications of the surface. In addition, the results showed a substantial reduction in protein adsorption and bacterial cell adhesion in superhydrophobic surface.

Keywords

• Surface modification
• Titanium dioxide nanoparticles
• Protein adsorption
• Biocompatibility
• Superhydrophobic surface.