Hepatic C9 cells switch their behaviour in short or long exposure to soft substrates.

Background Information: There have been several studies to understand the influence of stiffness of the culture substrates for different types of adherent cells. It is generally accepted that cell proliferation, spreading and focal adhesions increase with higher matrix stiffness. However, what remains unclear is whether this kind of cell behaviour may be reverted by culturing on soft substrates those cell lines that were originally selected or primed on stiff surfaces.

Micro-Macro: Selective Integration of Microfeatures Inside Low-Cost Macromolds for PDMS Microfluidics Fabrication.

Microfluidics has become a very promising technology in recent years, due to its great potential to revolutionize life-science solutions. Generic microfabrication processes have been progressively made available to academic laboratories thanks to cost-effective soft-lithography techniques and enabled important progress in applications like lab-on-chip platforms using rapid- prototyping. However, micron-sized features are required in most designs, especially in biomimetic cell culture platforms, imposing elevated costs of production associated with lithography and limiting the use of such devices.

Progress on the Use of Commercial Digital Optical Disc Units for Low-Power Laser Micromachining in Biomedical Applications.

The development of organ-on-chip and biological scaffolds is currently requiring simpler methods for microstructure biocompatible materials in three dimensions, to fabricate structural and functional elements in biomaterials, or modify the physicochemical properties of desired substrates. Aiming at addressing this need, a low-power CD-DVD-Blu-ray laser pickup head was mounted on a programmable three-axis micro-displacement system in order to modify the surface of polymeric materials in a local fashion. Thanks to a specially-designed method using a strongly absorbing additive coating the materials of interest, it has been possible to establish and precisely control processes useful in microtechnology for biomedical applications.

Low-cost formation of bulk and localized polymer-derived carbon nanodomains from polydimethylsiloxane.

We present two simple alternative methods to form polymer-derived carbon nanodomains in a controlled fashion and at low cost, using custom-made chemical vapour deposition and selective laser ablation with a commercial CD-DVD platform. Both processes presented shiny and dark residual materials after the polymer combustion and according to micro-Raman spectroscopy of the domains, graphitic nanocrystals and carbon nanotubes have successfully been produced by the combustion of polydimethylsiloxane layers. The fabrication processes and characterization of the byproduct materials are reported.

Rapid fabrication of on-demand high-resolution optical masks with a CD-DVD pickup unit.

A low-cost, direct fabrication technique with a micrometer range resolution has been implemented for rapid prototyping of optical masks for photolithography and structured light and diffraction optics applications. Using a setup based on the optical unit of a compact disc-digital versatile disc burner, a low-energy infrared laser beam was focused on a thin polymeric layer with embedded absorbing carbon nanopowder coated on a transparent glass substrate. This allowed for the generation of a custom-made transparent pattern in a computer numerical control fashion.