Cell adhesion properties of patterned poly(acrylic acid)/poly(allylamine hydrochloride) multilayer films created by room-temperature imprinting technique

Patterned poly(acrylic acid) (PAA)/poly(allylamine hydrochloride) (PAH) multilayer films with line structures of different lateral size and vertical height were fabricated by a room-temperature imprinting technique, and their cell adhesion properties were investigated. The nonimprinted PAA/PAH multilayer films are cytophilic toward NIH/3T3 fibroblasts and HeLa cells whether PAA or PAH is the outer most layer. In contrast, the PAA/PAH multilayer films with a 6.5-microm-line/3.5-microm-space pattern structure are cytophobic toward NIH/3T3 fibroblasts and HeLa cells when the height of the lines is 1.29 microm. By either increasing the lateral size of the patters to 69-microm-line/43-mum-space or decreasing the height of the imprinted lines to approximately 107 nm, imprinted PAA/PAH multilayer films become cytophilic. This kind of transition of cell adhesion behavior derives from the change of the physical pattern size of the PAA/PAH multilayer films and is independent of the chemical composition of the films. The easy patterning of layer-by-layer assembled polymeric multilayer films with the room-temperature imprinting technique provides a facile way to tailor the cellular behavior of the layered polymeric films by simply changing the pattern dimensions.