The nanometer scale topography of self‐assembling structural protein complexes in animals is believed to induce favorable cell responses. An important example of such nanostructured biological complexes is fibrillar collagen that possesses a cross‐striation structure with a periodicity of 69 nm and a peak‐to‐valley distance of 4–6 nm. Bovine collagen type I was assembled into fibrillar structures in vitro and sedimented onto solid supports. Their structural motif was transferred into a nickel replica by physical vapor deposition of a small‐grained metal layer followed by galvanic plating. The resulting inverted nickel structure was found to faithfully present most of the micrometer and nanometer scale topography of the biological original. This nickel replica was used as a die for the injection molding of a range of different thermoplastic polymers. Total injection molding cycle times were in the range of 30–45 seconds. One of the polymer materials investigated, polyethylene, displayed poor replication of the biological nanotopographical motif. However, the majority of the polymers showed very high replication fidelity as witnessed by their ability to replicate the cross‐striation features of less than 5 nm height difference. The latter group of materials includes poly(propylene), poly(methyl methacrylate), poly(L ‐lactic acid), polycaprolactone, and a copolymer of cyclic and linear olefins (COC). This work suggests that the current limiting factor for the injection molding of nanometer scale topography in thermoplastic polymers lies with the grain size of the initial metal coating of the mold rather than the polymers themselves.
A method has been developed for calculating hydraulic pressures induced by thermal expansion of liquid binders early in the removal cycle, when evaporative losses are negligible and fully saturated conditions prevail. Specific results were obtained for flat compacts containing a common wax binder, mixed with varying amounts of low-density polyethylne. In general, these results show how the risk of hydraulic fracture increases with heating rate and compact thickness. Although pressures are minimal when the binder consists entirely of wax, the continual addition of polyethylene eventually gives rise to unacceptable risk levels, even for relatively thin compacts. Binder removal at elevated temperatures is considered subsequently. In this case, vapor pressures eventually approach a critical level, thereby allowing mass removal by evaporation to overcome the effect of thermal expansion in maintaining full saturation. With the onset of void formation, the developing capillary pressure supersedes hydraulic pressure as the driving force in liquid transport. Besides representing capillary flow, the present formulation also accounts for thermal degradation of the binder during removal. The resulting system of equations was solved numerically for a variety of representative debinding conditions. Predictions for flat compact containing a balanced wax/polyethylene binder indicate that thermal degradation of the polyethylene can give rise to a marked improvement in debinding rates. It turns out, however, that this enhancement is far more effective in thinner compacts. 相似文献