Effect of gas plasma on polycaprolactone (PCL) membrane wettability and collagen type I immobilized for enhancing cell proliferation

This paper shows the results of gas plasma optimization by using 2k factorial design of experiment analysis (2k - DOE) on polycaprolactone (PCL) membrane. Types of gas (Argon and Oxygen), gas flow rate and plasma treatment time were focused. The objective is to find the optimum condition that minimizes membrane hydrophobicity. After plasma treatment, the PCL membrane was further immobilized with collagen. MTT cell culture results show that L929 cell proliferation on modified PCL membrane was better than the cell culture plate, suggesting that optimum plasma condition followed by collagen immobilization is a new and effective surface modification method for tissue engineering (TE).