Surfaces with tailored adhesion properties

The surface determines the adhesion properties when a work piece is brought into contact with organic, inorganic or living matter. Adhesion to different media can be tailored to a large extent by precise control over the surface properties, e.g. by modifying surface roughness or its chemical composition. Plasma polymer surface coatings, both from low pressure plasmas and atmospheric pressure plasmas, offer an interesting pathway to precisely tune adhesion behaviour, ranging from hydrophilic, hydrophobic, oleophilic or oleophobic surfaces towards cell-attracting and cell-repelling surfaces. The key to obtain targeted surface modifications lies in precise control over precursor chemistry and plasma parameters, enabling e.g., to achieve PFAS-free antiadhesive coatings even without the use of fluorine-containing precursors.

Microfluidic systems are of great importance for bioanalysis and integrate analytical functions such as sample introduction, chemical and biochemical reaction and detection on one chip. With the help of plasmas and masked/maskless approaches, chemically different microstructures can be created on a variety of materials in a targeted manner. Multi-step plasma process sequences can be used to create a combination of cell-attracting and cell-repelling areas on the surface.