Abstract
This study describes an easy method to fabricate and functionalize silicon nanostructures for investigating cell-substrate interaction between silicon nanostructures and human cancer cell lines (breast and lung cancers). These newly developed nanotextured silicon nanostructures with different chemical modifications can give us more knowledge of the interactions between cells and surrounding environment in vitro. In this study, the chemical etching is used to fabricate the silicon nanostructures for mass production. Also, two silane-based chemicals can be self-assembled on the surfaces via high quality vapor deposition technique. We have found that breast and lung cancer cells showed different morphogenesis when cells adhered on planar and nanotexured silicon surfaces. These results showed that the cell behaviors including cell adhesion and spreading would be affected by the combination of physical properties come from surface topology as well as the chemical properties such as the hydrophobicity of adhered surfaces. The cell pattern also can be controlled via these functionalized patterned silicon nanostructures. This study showed potential applications in tissue engineering or basic cell biology research such as manipulating cell development and how cell migrate on these nanotextures by using these nanotextured materials.