Background

Hierarchically structured materials, such as wrinkled structures, are nature’s way of packing a very high surface area into a small footprint. The existing methods for making artificial wrinkled structures, however, are designed for polymers and metals and thus inherently incompatible with biomolecules. Most such methods are reliant on high temperatures and/or organic solvents and are harsh and disruptive towards biologics such as proteins, nucleic acids, or viruses.

Technology Overview

Researchers at McMaster have invented a transformative method, free of heat and solvents, that allowed for the preservation of micro and nanostructure of biologics while inducing substrate wrinkling. A phage bioink was used to print soft phage microarrays with controllable size on prestressed polystyrene substrates. Subsequent substrate shrinkage induced 2D