Paper
Journal of Materials Chemistry B
irradiation to confirm the cell morphology. We found that cell
spreading was slightly suppressed on the substrate after UV
irradiation (the average aspect ratio of the initial state and after
UV irradiation was approximately 1.88 and 1.35, respectively).
We hypothesize that this behavior is due to an increase of
polarity from SP type to MC type caused by photo-isomerization
of PSpMA. These results imply that it could be applied as
a photo-controllable scaffold material for cell culture. This
material may be usable as a recyclable cell culture scaffold by
exposure to external stimuli.
7 M. A. C. Stuart, W. T. S. Huck, J. Genzer, M. M u¨ ller, C. Ober,
M. Stamm, G. B. Sukhorukov, I. Szleifer, V. V. Tsukruk,
M. Urban, F. Winnik, S. Zauscher, I. Luzinov and S. Minko,
Emerging applications of stimuli-responsive polymer mate-
rials, Nat. Mater., 2010, 9, 101–113.
8 F. Ercole, T. P. Davis and R. A. Evans, Photo-responsive
systems and biomaterials: photochromic polymers, light-
triggered self-assembly, surface modification, fluorescence
modulation and beyond, Polym. Chem., 2010, 1, 37–54.
9 J. F. Gohy and Y. Zhao, Photo-responsive block copolymer
micelles: design and behavior, Chem. Soc. Rev., 2013, 42,
7117–7129.
Conclusions
10 O. Bertrand and J. F. Gohy, Photo-responsive polymers:
synthesis and applications, Polym. Chem., 2017, 8, 52–73.
We successfully designed and synthesized a spiropyran mono-
mer (SpMA) with a methacryloyl group on the nitrobenzene ring
of a spiropyran skeleton. We also homo-polymerized SpMA
using Ru-catalyzed living radical polymerization. Subsequently,
we measured the contact angle of water and captive bubbles in
order to confirm photo-isomerization of the PSpMA thin film
both under and not under UV irradiation. As a result, the water
contact angle and captive bubble contact angle changed approxi-
mately 101 because of the polarity change caused by the photo-
isomerization from SP type to MC type. The number of adhered
NIH3T3 cells dramatically decreased on the substrate cell-
cultured after UV irradiation. These results also imply that this
is due to increased polarity by photo-isomerization of PSpMA.
We successfully synthesized materials with photo-controllable
surface properties using PSpMA. We think that these materials
may be applied as recyclable cell culture scaffolds created by
external stimuli, as well as various new polymer materials with
copolymerization in the near future.
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8 J. Th ´e venot, H. Oliveira, O. Sandre and S. Lecommandoux,
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