Water-stable plasma polymerized N,N-dimethylacrylamide coatings to control cellular adhesion

The plasma polymerization of amide-based precursors is a nearly unexplored research area, which is in contrast with the abundance of reports focussing on amide-based surface modification using wet chemistry. Therefore, this study aims to profoundly investigate the near atmospheric pressure plasma polymerization of N,N-dimethylacrylamide to obtain stable coatings. In contrast to the unstable coatings obtained at lower discharge powers, the stable coatings that were obtained at higher powers showed a lower hydrophilicity as assessed by WCA. This decrease in hydrophilicity with in increasing plasma power was found to be related to a reduced preservation of the monomer structure, as observed by FTIR, Raman spectroscopy, XPS and XPS C60 depth profiling, a rarely used but effective combination of techniques. Furthermore, the chemical composition of the coating was found to be in good agreement with the plasma active species observed by optical emission spectroscopy. Additionally, XPS C60 depth profiling indicat...