Fibrinogen adsorption onto 316L stainless steel, Nitinol and titanium

Fibrinogen adsorption onto mechanically polished biomedical grade 316L stainless steel (316LSS), nickel titanium alloy (Nitinol) and commercially pure titanium (CpTi) surfaces were studied by measurements of adsorption isotherms and adsorption kinetics using an ex-situ wavelength dispersive spectroscopy technique (WDS). Surface composition, roughness and wettability of these materials were characterized by X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy (XPS), atomic force microscopy (AFM) and water contact angle (WCA) measurements. Adsorption isotherm results showed that surface protein concentration on these materials increased with increasing concentration of fibrinogen in phosphate buffer solution. The fibrinogen adsorption isotherms were modeled by both the monolayer Langmuir isotherm and the multilayer Brunauer-Emmett-Teller (BET) isotherm. The results strongly suggest that fibrinogen forms multilayer structures on these materials when the concentration in solution is high. Complementary measurements on the absorbed fibrinogen films by spectroscopic ellipsometry (SE) support this view.