Figure 3.
Substrates were characterized with contact angle and XPS at each step of the process. Contact angle measurements are shown for (a) piranha treated slides, which demonstrated a contact angle of <5° that is consistent with glass substrates treated in this manner. (b) GPTMS treated slides show a characteristic increase in a contact angle of 58.5°. (c) Avidin treated slides show a decrease in the contact angle to 29.6°, which can be attributed to avidin’s hydrophilicity. (n ≥ 3, SE ≤ 1.3 for all three conditions) XPS spectra data are shown for each of these steps. (d) C 1s clearly demonstrates an increase in the total carbon after 3-GPTMS and avidin functionalization indicating their presence on the surface. (e) N 1s peak showed no substantial peaks until avidin functionalization indicating avidin’s presence on the surface. (f,g) Both the O 1s and Si 2p peaks demonstrate shielding effects as the addition of silane and later avidin decrease the signal intensity of the underlying SiO2 framework.