Soft Matter Gradient Surfaces: Methods and Applications

This book helps to bridge many soft material fields (materials science, chemistry, biomaterials) and introduces scientists not familiar with gradient substrates to new exciting opportunities for their work. Soft matter gradient surfaces have played a pivotal role in numerous aspects of materials research. They have facilitated fast screening of physico-chemical phenomena, enabled fabrication of material structures that would have been difficult to manufacture otherwise, acted as "recording media" for monitoring a given physico-chemico-biological process, and played a key role in designing and fabricating surface-bound "engines" capable of acting as molecular and macromolecular motors and thus drove and/or directed a given transport phenomenon. Chapters will include fabrication, gradients in self-assembled monolayers, polymer gradients, dynamic gradient structures, applications in materials science, structure and assembly, mechanical properties, sensors, biomaterial applications, protein adsorption on gradient surfaces, and cells and microtubules on gradient surfaces.