Surface nanopatterning of phosphorylcholine unit by well-defined block copolymer containing 2-methacryloyloxyethyl phosphorylcholine

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Ordered surface patterning of biocompatible microdomain is potentially needed in many applications such as high sensitive biochips, biosensors, and nanobio devices for cell culturing. One of the efficient ways in the fabrication of patterned surface is using the microphase separation of well-defined block copolymers by controlling molecular weight and film formation process. Thus we synthesize several compositions of block copolymers containing 2-methacryloyloxyethyl phosphorylcholine (MPC) which is hydrophilic and shows excellent biocompatibility, and polydimethylsiloxane (PDMS) which has hydrophobic nature and usually used as soft lithography materials. All of the copolymers were synthesized by the atom transfer radical polymerization (ATRP) method at room temperature. The kinetics plot and molecular weight plot shows that the polymerizations of block copolymers were well controlled, thus the compositions of block copolymers were controllable. Two kinds of synthesized copolymers: the longest MPC segment and the shortest one, were cast on Si(100) substrate by spin casting or solvent casting. By using the IR-multichannel viewer and atom force microscope, we could conclude that the film formed by the longest MPC segment could not generate the well defined surface structure due to its long chain aggregation. By using the copolymer containing the shortest MPC segment, we could generate a nanoscale ordered surface patterning of phorsphorylcholine unit.