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Any
material interacts with its environment through
its surface, therefore it is crucial to master
the design and building of artificial surfaces
able to interact with their environment following
a designated pattern. |
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Any material, from stainless
steel to liposomes, from polymer prostheses to carbon
fibers, interacts with its environment through its surface.
Adhesion, corrosion, lubrication, electrical contact,
biocompatibility or wettability are well-known phenomena
governed by surface effects.
The living systems are also home to innumerable interfacial
phenomena located in lipidic bi-layers or on the outer
surface of proteins. It is therefore crucial for both
fundamental and technological terms, to master the design
and building of artificial surfaces able to interact
with their environment following a designated pattern.
GRAFTFAST© is a new coating technology
which can be applied to any kind of surface and was
developed within the Laboratory of Chemistry of Surfaces
and Interfaces (LCSI)
of IRAMIS
(Institute of Radiation Matter Saclay, CEA)
by two students.
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GRAFTFAST© is clean:
it is performed in water, without any organic solvent,
and requires no external source of energy like electricity
or high temperature.
GRAFTFAST© is user
friendly: the surface to be coated is simply
dipped into a reactive solution or the latter can be
sprayed directly on the surface. It does not require
any heavy specific equipment such as potentiostats,
of vacuum facilities…
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GRAFTFAST© is efficient:
the thickness of the coatings, their composition and
pattern on the substrate are fully controllable by the
user.
GRAFTFAST© is versatile: it is
suitable for all materials,
either conductors or insulator materials, from glass
to metals, from Teflon® (PTFE) to any natural polymers
such as latex or rubber, from plastics to cellulose
(wood or paper), from artificial to natural fibers,
cotton or felt, and also ceramics and nano-objects such
as carbon nanotubes...
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GRAFTFAST©
is accurate: the coatings prepared using the technology
are conformal, i.e. they
are uniform in thickness all over the substrate, which
guarantees uniform properties whatever the size and
topology of the surface to be coated.
The surface properties of a material can easily be changed
by coatings and the support can for example be preserved
from the attacks of its environment (waterproofing,
corrosion protection…), or can differently interact
with him, (refractive index…) it can also be metallized
without using electroplating.
GRAFTFAST© is thus at the crossroads
of nanotechnology and biotechnology:
conformal and uniform coatings can be obtained with
tunable thickness and composition on any kind of surface,
which allows further immobilization of various molecules,
biomolecules or nano-objects using GRAFTFAST©
coatings as a primer to achieve any designated functionalization
of surfaces.
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