A. Fabrication of flexible nanopatterned substrates (fTNFS) using capillary force lithography and subsequent thermoresponsive functionalization with amine-terminated PNIPAM (a-PNIPAM).
B. Image of flexible-TNFS after curing and a-PNIPAM functionalization. Rainbow coloring is caused by the nanotopography deflecting light. (Inset) Scanning electron micrograph of fTNFS surface demonstrating high fidelity fabrication of the ridge-groove nanotopography.
C. Schematic of gel casting and stacking of organized cell monolayers from flexible TNFS.
D. Z-stack cross-sectional image of smooth muscle cell tri-layer tissue stack 24 hours after stacking. Top and bottom sheets were membrane-dyed red (Cell Tracker Red) and middle sheet was membrane-dyed green (Cell Tracker Green) before stacking.