Nanostructured Surface with Tunable Contact Angle Hysteresis for Constructing In Vitro Tumor Model

Contact angle hysteresis (CAH) is an important phenomenon in surface chemistry. In this paper, we fabricated nanostructured substrates and investigated the relationship between roughness and CAH. We demonstrated that by patterning well-tuned CAH in superhydrophobic background, we can pattern droplets with controlled sizes. We further showed that our system could be used in fabricating complex hydrogel architecture, allowing coculture of different types of cells in three-dimensional way. This CAH-based patterning strategy would provide in vitro models for tissue engineering and drug delivery.