Polypeptide-based multilayer nanoarchitectures: Controlled assembly on planar and colloidal substrates for biomedical applications.

Polypeptides have shown an excellent potential in nanomedicine thanks to their biocompatibility, biodegradability, high functionality, and responsiveness to several stimuli. Polypeptides exhibit high propensity to organize at the supramolecular level; hence, they have been extensively considered as building blocks in the layer-by-layer (LbL) assembly. The LbL technique is a highly versatile methodology, which involves the sequential assembly of building blocks, mainly driven by electrostatic interactions, onto planar or colloidal templates to fabricate sophisticated multilayer nanoarchitectures.

On the design and development of foamed GO-hydrogel nanocomposite surfaces by ultra-short laser processing.

Graphene oxide (GO) and reduced graphene oxide have outstanding qualities that could be exploited as reinforcement and antibacterial agents in a plethora of biomedical applications. In this contribution, it is reported the deployment of a polyacrylamide GO-hydrogel composite (GO@pAAm) which was photo-converted and structured by ultra-short laser irradiation using a direct laser writing (DLW) approach. The materials were characterized by Fourier Transform Infrared spectroscopy, scanning electron microscopy and confocal microscopy.

Heating influence on hierarchical structures fabricated by direct laser interference patterning.

The combination of direct laser interference patterning (DLIP) with laser-induced periodic surface structures (LIPSS) enables the fabrication of functional surfaces reported for a wide spectrum of materials. The process throughput is usually increased by applying higher average laser powers. However, this causes heat accumulation impacting the roughness and shape of produced surface patterns.

Structuring and functionalization of non-metallic materials using direct laser interference patterning: a review.

Direct laser interference patterning (DLIP) is a laser-based surface structuring method that stands out for its high throughput, flexibility and resolution for laboratory and industrial manufacturing. This top-down technique relies on the formation of an interference pattern by overlapping multiple laser beams onto the sample surface and thus producing a periodic texture by melting and/or ablating the material. Driven by the large industrial sectors, DLIP has been extensively used in the last decades to functionalize metallic surfaces, such as steel, aluminium, copper or nickel.

Development of micropatterning polyimide films for enhanced antifouling and antibacterial properties.

A commercial biomedical Polyimide (PI) film was topographically and chemically modified by generating micrometric periodic arrays of lines using Direct Laser Interference Patterning (DLIP) in order to improve antifouling and antibacterial properties. DLIP patterning was performed with periods from 1 μm to 10 μm. The physical modification of the surface was characterized by SEM, AFM and contact angle measurements and, the chemical composition of the ablated surfaces was analyzed by ATR-IR and XPS spectroscopies.