A Micro-Fluidic Technique for the Evaluation of the Blood Compatibility of Nanostructured Polymer Surfaces

We present a micro-fluidic technique for the evaluation of the blood compatibility of nano-structured surfaces under flow conditions. Micro-fluidic chips are coated with a polymer film. The demixing behavior of an immiscible polymer blend is used to create structured surfaces having typical feature sizes ranging from the nanometer to the micrometer length scale. Whole human blood is used to evaluate the blood interaction with these surfaces in terms of platelet adhesion, while platelet poor plasma is used to investigate protein adsorption. Our studies indicate that increasing the feature size of the surface nano-structures encourages von Willebrand factor adsorption and thus platelet adhesion and consequent thrombus formation