Spectroscopic biomaterial surfaces

Spectroscopic methods are mainly useful to identify the elements, functional groups, and chemical structures close to the biomaterial surface. Techniques like X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy, attenuated total reflection fourier transform infrared spectroscopy, and secondary ion mass spectrometry have been used widely in determining the elemental composition and charged species at biomaterial surface. Other important characteristics obtained from the biomaterial surface are surface energy and relative wettability using thermodynamic method such as contact angle experiments. 

Jungwoon Jung obtained his BS degree in 2007 from POSTECH and joined professor Ree s group for his PhD. He is currently working on the structures and properties of polymeric biomaterials. For the structural studies, he is using various tools such as synchrotron X-ray and neutron reflectivity and scattering, spectroscopic ellipsometry, surface plasmon spectroscopy, and fluorescence spectroscopy. 

Tengvall P, Lundstrom I, Liedberg B (1998) Protein adsorption studies on model organic surfaces an ellipsometric and infrared spectroscopic approach. Biomaterials 19 407-422... 

Noh MS, Jun BH, Kim S, Kang H, Woo MA, Minai-Tehrani A, Kim JE, Kim J, Park J, Lim HT, Park SC, Hyeon T, Kim YK, Jeong DH, Lee YS, Cho MH (2009) Magnetic surface-enhanced Raman spectroscopic (M-SERS) dots for the identification of bronchioalveolar stem cells in normal and lung cancer mice. Biomaterials 30 3915-3925... 

Surface characterization by spectroscopic techniques yields information on the functional groups and elemental composition on the surface of polymeric biomaterials. The most common spectroscopic tools used for biomedical polymers are X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy (XPS), Auger electron spectroscopy (AES), secondary ion mass spectrometry (SIMS), and Fourier transform infrared spectroscopy (FTIR) (diffuse reflectance and attenuated total internal reflectance modes). Each of these techniques is discussed in the succeeding text. 

FTIR spectroscopy has proven to be particularly useful in gaining an understanding of the biocompatibility phenomenon. It is believed [746, 841, 856, 857] that protein adsorption is the initial step in the interaction of blood with implanted biomaterials, followed by adhesion of cells and subsequent tissue attachment. This implies that the substrate surface characteristics influence the process, which was confirmed by ATR studies of albumin adsorption on calcium phosphate bioceramics and titanium [763] and segmented polyurethane [764], albumin and fibrinogen on acetylated and unmodified cellulose [765, 766], poly(acrylic acid)-mucin bioadhesion [767], polyurethane-blood contact surfaces [768], and other proteins on poly(ester)urethane [769], polystyrene [767, 771] and poly(octadecyl methacrylate) [771] and by IRRAS study of adsorption of proteins on Cu [858]. Another branch of IR spectroscopic studies of protein adsorption relates to microbial adhesion (Section 7.8.3). 

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