Role of plasma processing in nanobiotechnologies

One of the major challenges for the development of new tools for biological analysis relies on the ability to design advanced surfaces with appropriate surface chemistries and topography from micrometers down to few nanometers. For instance, structuring surfaces with adhesive and non adhesive zone in order to preferentially guide the cell growth is one of the most interesting tools for the development of cell chips and for tissue engineering. Moreover, recent works have shown that hetero functional nano-structured surfaces containing contrasted chemical response towards proteins (adhesive and repellent) lead to an increase of the immuno-reaction sensitivity recognition (= higher binding capacity) between antigens and antibodies couples, when compared to the non structured surfaces.To fulfill these requirements, plasma assisted techniques are interesting since they can provided functionalized surfaces with different chemistry with a good adhesion of several kind of materials and due to their high degree of reticulation are resistant to most of the solvent. In this presentation, we will show some examples of micro- and nano-functional surfaces provided by plasma processes in combination with optical lithography, electron beam lithography and colloidal lithography for applications in different biosensing devices.