Fabrication of micro-structured scaffold using self-assembled particles and effects of surface geometries on cell adhesion

Controlling of cell location is needed for some cellular applications like drug screening. Micro/nano-structured surface are used for controlling of cell location without using any chemical agents. An average roughness is of interest for investigating an effect on location of cell adhesion. However, some studies have indicated different results about cell adhesion even though using same kinds of cell line, material properties of scaffolds, and geometrical properties of scaffolds. Those studies have investigated an effect of average roughness only. An average roughness, therefore, is not sufficient for classifying the structured surface. In addition, the structured surfaces have no geometric regularity typically. To resolve these problems, the authors employed regularly arranged surface for cell culture scaffold and investigated effects of an average roughness, skewness, and kurtosis on cell adhesion. The authors used self-assembled SiO2 particles as a mask of reactive ion etching of Si wafer for fabricating micro-structured substrate. Then, geometric transferring technique of polydimethylsiloxane is used for fabricating cell culture scaffolds. An average roughness, skewness, and kurtosis of the scaffolds can be controlled by changing RF power and etching time. The structure that has negative skewness improves cell adhesion was found. It can be seen that Rsk of surface works as an important factor for cell adhesion.