Two-photon lithography for customized microstructured surfaces and their influence on wettability and bacterial load

Device-related bacterial infections account for a large proportion of hospital-acquired infections. The ability of bacteria to form a biofilm as a protective shield usually makes treatment impossible without removal of the implant. Topographic surfaces have attracted considerable attention in studies seeking antibacterial properties without the need for additional antimicrobial substances. As there are still no valid rules for the design of antibacterial microstructured surfaces, a fast, reproducible production technique with good resolution is required to produce test surfaces and to examine their effectiveness with regard to their antibacterial properties.

In this work various surfaces, flat and with microcylinders in different dimensions (flat, 1, 3 and 9 μm) with a surface area of 7 × 7 mm were fabricated with a nanoprinter using two-photon lithography and evaluated for their antibiofilm effect. The microstructured surfaces were cultured for 24 h with different strains of Pseudomonas aeruginosa and Staphylococcus aureus to study bacterial attachment to the patterned surfaces. In addition, surface wettability was measured by a static contact angle measurement.

Contact angles increased with cylinder size and thus hydrophobicity. Despite the difference in wettability, Staphylococcus aureus was not affected by the microstructures, while for Pseudomonas aeruginosa the bacterial load increased with the size of the cylinders, and compared to a flat surface, a reduction in bacteria was observed for one strain on the smallest cylinders.

Two-photon lithography allowed rapid and flexible production of microcylinders of different sizes, which affected surface wettability and bacterial load, however, depending on bacterial type and strain.