Nanopillars on cicada wings are inherently antibacterial, irrespective of surface chemistry. Application of nanopillars to polymer surfaces would result in inherently antibacterial surfaces without use of antibiotic drugs or biocide chemicals. Nano- and microstructured antibacterial surfaces have been previously proposed; none of these approaches can be used on ordinary polymer surfaces or easily scaled up. Thus, we applied industrial polymer nanostructuring techniques to generate biomimetic antibacterial nanostructures at the surfaces of poly(methylmethacrylate) (PMMA), a material commonly used in medical devices. We employed nanoimprint lithography, an industrially viable fabrication process, to produce our nanostructures. We utilized several molds for our process: a nano-holed (negative) mold, a commercially available nickel antireflective nanopillar (positive) mold, and a black silicon nanopillar (positive) mold fabricated with reactive ion etching. We treated these oxide surfaces with a fluorinated silane release coating (perflurodecyltrichlorosilane) using molecular vapor deposition. These molds were used to fabricate PMMA nanopillar arrays or to generate polydimethylsiloxane nanohole arrays to be used for subsequent PMMA nanopillar molding. The replication processes resulted in large, flat PMMA nanopillar arrays. Compared to flat films, PMMA nanopillar arrays 1) exhibited reduced surface adhesion of live <i>E. coli</i> determined by a standard fluorescence based viability assay, and 2) killed these bacteria, as evidenced AFM and SEM showing punctured bacterial cells on nanopillar arrays. Recent efforts have focused on optimizing the bactericidal performance of pillars to assess effectiveness against gram-positive bacteria. Our surfaces could be used for a wide variety of environmental and medical applications.

Towards a scalable, biomimetic antibacterial polymer surface

251st National Meeting (2016)

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