Tailored Combinatorial Microcompartments through the Self-Organization of Microobjects: Assembly, Characterization, and Cell Studies

摘要

A new concept enables the generation of cell microenvironments by microobject assembly at an water/air interface. As the orientation of 30 mu m sized polymer cubes and their capillary force assembly are controlled by the surface wettability, which in turn can be modulated by coating the initially exposed surfaces with gold and self-assembled mono-layers, unique niches in closely packed arrays of cubes with vertex up orientation can be realized. The random assembly of distinctly different cubes, prefunctionalized or surface-structured exclusively on their top surface, facilitates the parallel generation of different microenvironments in a combinatorial manner, which paves the way to future systematic structure- property relationship studies with cells.