Simple fabrication of PEG-based chemical micropatterns for neural network formation

Neural network formation has attracted increasing interest for applications in neurotoxicology, neurodevelopmental biology, and cell-based biosensors which comprise external microelectronic circuits that stimulate and record neural activity. In this paper, we present a simple and efficient method to create a planar PC12 neural network on well-controlled PEG-based chemical micropatterns which contain a network of regular hexagon units interconnected by microchannels. X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy, contact angle goniometer and fluorescence microscopy techniques are used to monitor the individual steps of the patterning process.