Fabrication of micropatterned thermosensitive gel with highly-ordered honeycomb surface and inverse opal structure
1Department of Materials Engineering, Graduate School of Engineering, The University of Tokyo, 7-3-1 Hongo, Bunkyo-ku, Tokyo 113-8656, Japan.
Biomedical Microdevices
|March 28, 2009
Abstract:
Thermosensitive poly(N-isopropylacrylamide) gels with highly-ordered honeycomb surface and inverse opal structure were successfully fabricated by several microfabrication methods using closely packed silica beads as a template. The gels are able to reversibly change the shapes and sizes of the pores with swelling-deswelling by temperature changes. In particular, regular buckling was induced due to compression with swelling. Such a thermoregulation of surface topography might be useful for design of functional surfaces with tunable physical properties.
