Surface Functionalization of Plasma Treated Ultrananocrystalline Diamond/Amorphous Carbon Composite Films

Diamond possesses a number of outstanding properties which make it a perspective material as platform for preparation of biosensors. The diamond surface needs to be activated before the chemical attachment of crosslinkers with which biomolecules can interact. In the current work we have investigated the modification of ultrananocrystalline diamond/amorphous carbon (UNCD/a-C) films by oxygen and ammonia plasmas. Afterwards the layers were functionalized in a further step to obtain thiol-active maleimide groups on the surface. We studied the possibility for direct binding of maleimide to terminal OH-groups on the UNCD surface and for silanization with 3-aminopropyltriethoxysilane (APTES) to obtain NH2-groups for the following attachment of sulfosuccinimidyl 4-(N-maleimidomethyl)-cyclohexane-1-carboxylate (SSMCC). The thiol-bearing fluorescein-related dye 5-((2-(and-3)-S-(acetylmercapto) succinoyl) amino) fluorescein (SAMSA) was immobilized as an model biomolecule to evaluate the achieved thiol-activity by fluorescence microscopy. The results of the above mentioned surface modification and functionalization steps were investigated by Auger electron spectroscopy (AES) and contact angle measurements.