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To enhance the strength-to-weight ratio of a material, one may try to either improve the strength or lower the density, or both. The lightest solid materials have a density in the range of 1,000 kg/m3; only cellular materials, such as technical foams, can reach considerably lower values. However, compared with corresponding bulk materials, their specific strength generally is significantly lower. Cellular topologies may be divided into bending- and stretching-dominated ones. Technical foams are structured randomly and behave in a bending-dominated way, which is less weight efficient, with respect to strength, than stretching-dominated behavior, such as in regular braced frameworks. Cancellous bone and other natural cellular solids have an optimized architecture. Their basic material is structured hierarchically and consists of nanometer-size elements, providing a benefit from size effects in the material strength. Designing cellular materials with a specific microarchitecture would allow one to exploit the structural advantages of stretching-dominated constructions as well as size-dependent strengthening effects. In this paper, we demonstrate that such materials may be fabricated. Applying 3D laser lithography, we produced and characterized micro-truss and -shell structures made from alumina-polymer composite. Size-dependent strengthening of alumina shells has been observed, particularly when applied with a characteristic thickness below 100 nm. The presented artificial cellular materials reach compressive strengths up to 280 MPa with densities well below 1,000 kg/m3. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Biosensing methods continue to increase in complexity, and together with growing interest in living materials, new options for fixing bacteria under flow conditions are needed. Current methods of cell fixation consist of microfluidic cell trapping, dielectrophoretic immobilization, chemical fixation, or cell encapsulation. However, these methods come with disadvantages, such as chemical alteration, isolation, or exposure to high shear forces. In this work we present electrospun carbon nanofibers as a new cell scaffold material, and explored the potential of this material for bacterial adhesion under normal flow conditions. To characterize immobilization, model organisms E. coli were introduced into carbon nanofiber samples, and after an incubation period, perfusion at different flow speeds was applied. Adhesion was quantified by counting the number of bacteria remaining on the scaffold after a fixed period of flow exposure. The fibers were additionally characterized for their wettability and surface roughness, properties expected to influence adhesion. It was observed that a larger fraction of bacteria remained on the scaffold as flow rates increased in comparison with surfaces without the scaffold. Thus, electrospun carbon nanofibers provide an interesting approach of bacterial fixation given their biocompatibility and tune-able properties (e.g. electrical conductivity and fiber diameter), opening a variety of applications and enabling tailored scaffolds optimized for a variety of processes and bacteria strains. [Display omitted] [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study aims to establish and optimize a process for the fabrication of 3D microstructures of the biocompatible polymer Parylene C using hot embossing techniques. The different process parameters such as embossing temperature, embossing force, demolding temperature and speed, and the usage of a release agent were optimized, utilizing adhesive micropillars as a use case. To enhance compatibility with conventional semiconductor fabrication techniques, hot embossing of Parylene C was adapted from conventional stainless steel substrates to silicon chip platforms. Furthermore, this adaptation included an investigation of the effects of the hot embossing process on metal layers embedded in the Parylene C, ensuring compatibility with the ultra-thin Parylene printed circuit board (PCB) demonstrated previously. To evaluate the produced microstructures, a combination of characterization methods was employed, including light microscopy (LM) and scanning electron microscopy (SEM), X-ray diffraction (XRD), X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy (XPS), and Fourier-transform infrared spectroscopy (FTIR). These methods provided comprehensive insights into the morphological, chemical, and structural properties of the embossed Parylene C. Considering the improved results compared to existing patterning techniques for Parylene C like plasma etching or laser ablation, the developed hot embossing approach yields a superior structural integrity, characterized by increased feature resolution and enhanced sidewall smoothness. These advancements render the method particularly suitable for diverse applications, including but not limited to, sensor optical components, adhesive interfaces for medical wearables, and microfluidic systems. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Artificial intelligence (AI) has emerged as a powerful set of tools for engineering innovative materials. However, the AI-aided design of materials textures has not yet been researched in depth. In order to explore the potentials of AI for discovering innovative biointerfaces and engineering materials surfaces, especially for biomedical applications, this study focuses on the control of wettability through design-controlled hierarchical surfaces, whose design is supported and its performance predicted thanks to adequately structured and trained artificial neural networks (ANN). The authors explain the creation of a comprehensive library of microtextured surfaces with well-known wettability properties. Such a library is processed and employed for the generation and training of artificial neural networks, which can predict the actual wetting performance of new design biointerfaces. The present research demonstrates that AI can importantly support the engineering of innovative hierarchical or multiscale surfaces when complex-to-model properties and phenomena, such as wettability and wetting, are involved. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We present the fabrication and characterization of inter-layer single-mode light-guiding structures in a newly developed photo-structurable polymer via femtosecond laser writing. A host-guest polymer system utilizing external diffusion induces permanent and high refractive index modulation. Analyzing the complete curing and the impact of external diffusion on refractive index profile helps optimize the fabrication process. The fabrications of 4 × 2 array interconnect and 3-waveguide core fan-out device involve only a single layer, and need no stacking or alignment effort. The resulting pitch size and crosstalk between single-mode waveguides are 25 μm and −34 dB, respectively. Adding sensitizer into the photopolymer to increase its sensitivity in two-photon polymerization at a writing wavelength of 390 nm reduces the surface roughness of written structures by a factor of seven. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this work, the two-photon-polymerization (TPP) fabrication technique was employed to manufacture three-dimensional (3D) micro-structures suitable for confined rarefied gas flows. Four different micro-tubes of simple geometry have been tested in vacuum conditions. The geometry of the micro-tubes was characterized via a focus-variation 3D optical measurement microscope, a digital microscope and an X-ray μ-tomography. Mass flow rate measurements of pressure-driven rarefied gas flows of nitrogen in slip and transition regimes were compared to theoretical values obtained via the kinetic theory of gases. The experimental measurements were realized via the constant volume technique. The good agreement obtained between experimental and numerical results proves the feasibility of using this fabrication technique to create well controlled 3D shaped microsystems for rarefied gas flows applications. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Polyacrylamide hydrogels are interesting materials for studying cells and cell–material interactions, thanks to the possibility of precisely adjusting their stiffness, shear modulus and porosity during synthesis, and to the feasibility of processing and manufacturing them towards structures and devices with controlled morphology and topography. In this study a novel approach, related to the processing of polyacrylamide hydrogels using soft-lithography and employing microstructured templates, is presented. The main novelty relies on the design and manufacturing processes used for achieving the microstructured templates, which are transferred by soft-lithography, with remarkable level of detail, to the polyacrylamide hydrogels. The conceived process is demonstrated by patterning polyacrylamide substrates with a set of vascular-like and parenchymal-like textures, for controlling cell populations. Final culture of amoeboid cells, whose dynamics is affected by the polyacrylamide patterns, provides a preliminary validation of the described strategy and helps to discuss its potentials. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Polymeric biointerfaces are already being used extensively in a wide set of biomedical devices and systems. The possibility of controlling cell populations on biointerfaces may be essential for connecting biological systems to synthetic materials and for researching relevant interactions between life and matter. In this study, we present and analyze synergies between an innovative approach for surface microstructuring and a molecular nanopatterning procedure of recent development. The combined set of techniques used may be instrumental for the development of a new generation of functional polymeric biointerfaces. Eukaryotic cell cultures placed upon the biointerfaces developed, both before and after molecular patterning, help to validate the proposal and to discuss the synergies between the surface microstructuring and molecular nanopatterning techniques described in the study. Their potential role in the production of versatile polymeric biointerfaces for lab- and organ-on-a-chip biodevices and towards more complex and biomimetic co-culture systems and cell cultivation set-ups are also examined. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]