Reactive polymer coatings for biological applications

Abstract

The design of biologically active surfaces offers a new dimension to the development of advanced materials for biomedical and microfluidic applications. Our approach to creating these surfaces is via the fabrication of vapor-based reactive polymer coatings, which provide sophisticated functional groups for the immobilization of biological ligands. Chemical vapor deposition (CVD) polymerization has been used to prepare a wide spectrum of functionalized poly(p- xylylenes). The applicability of a few of these reactive surfaces as stable platforms for biomimetic modifications is discussed in this review. ? 2008 American Chemical Society.