Stamp-stiffness calibrated micro contact printing

Micro contact printing is a quite useful technique for patterning protein such as cellular adhesion molecular. Especially, the method is popular to fabricate substrates for cell patterning in tissue engineering. However, a manual printing is difficult, because the stamp made from polydimethylsiloxane (PDMS) is easily deformed, and a printed pattern is also crushed. This study focused on the stiffness of PDMS stamp and discussed a micro-contact-printing controlled stamping force for a higher quality of pattern than that of manual. Considering in availability in medical or biological laboratory, the measurement method of stamp stiffness was developed by using a general microscope. The proposed stamping method gave a high printing-quality with 2.5% error of stamping area. Stamping setup controlling stamping force was developed, and a protein was patterned on a cell-culture substrate by the setup. By using the protein-patterned substrate, two-cell-patterned co-culture was successfully performed.