Providing health care at tolerable cost is one of the greatest challenges facing the world in this century. Technologies that may offer enhanced quality of care at reduced cost, such as plasma technology, will be of immense societal and commercial value. Thus, the COST action MP1101 aimed at the promotion of the low cost atmospheric pressure plasma for the biomedical applications, is highly important for the sustainable development of the life standards of the modern society. At the same time, electrospinning of the micro/nanofibrous materials gained a high interest due to the potential applications for biomedical devices, tissue engineering, drug delivery on the one hand and due to the low cost on the other one. However, because of the low surface free energy and poor wettablity of the untreated nanofibers, this material cannot be used directly as prepared and their surface must be activated, e.g. by plasma polymerization. Atmospheric pressure plasma polymerization is a low cost, upscalable environmentally friendly technique allowing durable modifications of surface properties without degradation of the bulk material. In this project, the atmospheric pressure plasma copolymerization of maleic anhydride and acetylene is aimed at the deposition of a stable carboxyl rich coatings on the surface of the polycaprolactone nanofibers. The surface chemistry and the morphology of the coated nanofibers will be studied by analytical techniques including infrared spectroscopy, X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy (XPS), secondary ion mass spectrometry (SIMS), trasmission and scannig electron microscopies (TEM and SEM). These methods will provide fundamental information about results of plasma polymerization. The cell adhesion to the coated nanofibrous materials will be evaluated and compared to the untreated surfaces. Finally, the correlation between the plasma conditions, surface chemistry and/or morphology and the cell adhesion will be established.

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