Reduction of the hydrophobicity of thiol-ene microfluidic devices using an adsorbed polymeric coating

摘要

Thiol-ene formulations have gained a considerable interest in the field of micro and nano fluidics, because of their physico-chemical properties and their polymerization characteristics. However, the hydrophobic nature of this material represents a considerable drawback to its application in micro and nano fluidics. In fact, the introduction of aqueous solutions into narrow channels, is complicated by the low wettability of this material. In addition, hydrophobicity makes its use with biological samples unsuitable. Here, we present a simple and fast approach to reduce dramatically the hydrophobicity of thiol-ene surfaces and to avoid protein unspecific binding by photo-grafting to the surface a ter polymer of dimethylacrylamide (DMA), glycidyl methacrylate (GMA) and 3-(trimethoxysilyl) propyl methacrylate (MAPS) which is very stable to aging, solvents and high temperature treatments. Due to its versatility, the proposed polymeric coating is suitable to enhance the analytical performance of any thiol-ene based micro and nano fluidic device.