Special issue: Plasmas for Biointerfaces

The interactions of materials with biological entities—bacteria, cells, blood, tissues, etc.—occur at their surface rather than within their bulk, eventually driving the biocompatibility and the success of a wide range of biomedical products such as prostheses, implants, devices, and lab wares. This concept, fully accepted in the biomaterials scientific and technological community, has always generated great interest in material surface modification technologies, among which non-equilibrium plasmas have always played a prominent role. Disposable tissue culture polystyrene (TCPS) plates, for example, could completely substitute glass Petri dishes in biological lab protocols in the late 1970s due to the efficacy of surface modification plasma processes capable of permanently altering the surface of PS from hydrophobic to hydrophilic, for greatly enhanced cell adhesion and growth. Since then, many other surface modification plasma processes have been investigated and scaled up to products, with the joint interdisciplinary efforts of plasma scientists, biologists, engineers, veterinarians, and medical doctors. Indeed, collaboration among such different types of scientists is at the origin, more recently, of the discipline of plasma medicine, where atmospheric pressure (AP) plasmas are investigated in direct or indirect contact with cells and tissues for therapeutic purposes.

Plasma processing science and technology today offer several processes, surfaces, and products for the biomaterials research community and the biomedical devices industry, many of them already available in the market...