User-friendly chemical patterning with digital light projection polymer brush photolithography

Patterned polymeric coatings are broadly relevant for all areas of bioengineering: anti-biofouling, controlled protein adsorption, guided cell growth, and many more. This contribution describes a robust topographical and chemical patterning platform that combines an LED digital light projector with oxygen-tolerant light-mediated polymerization to design advanced surfaces on the micron scale and in mild ambient conditions. The user-friendly nature of this approach is targeted towards bringing complex chemical patterning abilities based on surface-tethered polymers into the hands of non-experts and enabling both fundamental and applied studies related to patterned surfaces in bioengineering.