The design and control of substrate surfaces with nanometer- or micrometer-sized polymer films are of considerable interest for both fundamental and applied studies in the biomedical field because of the required surface properties. The layer-by-layer (LbL) technique was discovered in 1991 by Decher and co-workers for the fabrication of polymer multilayers constructed mainly through electrostatic interaction. We have extended the scope and applicability of this LbL assembly by introducing molecularly regular conformations of polymers or proteins by employing for the first time weak interactions, such as der Waals interactions and biological recognition. Since these weak interactions are the sum of the attractive or repulsive forces between parts of the same molecule, they allow macromolecules to be easily arranged into the most stable conformation in a LbL film. We have achieved stereocomplex LbL formations of stereoregular polymers and their application for stereospecific template polymerization and nanomaterials using methacrylic acid (MAA) and methyl methacrylate (MAA). We have also reported for the first time extracellular matrix (ECM) multilayers focused on fibronectin (FN) using biologically specific recognition.  By using the ECM multilayers, three-dimensional (3D) cellular multilayers could be developed to apply for tissue engineering and pharmaceutical application.

LbL assemblies using van der Waals or affinity interaction and their application

245th National Meeting (2013)

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