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Just to be clear, our Adhesive Polyimide Tape is not Kapton Tape. It is an excellent high temperature electrical insulation and masking tape with a range of benefits and we are happy to stand behind it without calling it something it is not.

A Transparent Polyimide Film as a Biological Cell Culture Sheet with Microstructures

In recent years, the research on stem cell cultures has been actively performed in order to generate cell populations for the functional recovery of human body parts lost by illness or injury. Polymer materials have attracted attention in this field because they have biocompatibility, good mechanical properties, and outstanding moldability. Moreover, polymers are flexible and cheap when compared to glass materials. Polymer materials are often used as cell culture sheets, and polymer substrates with fabricated microstructures have been reported to support the culture of biological cells. Polymer materials in the form of elastomeric gels, porous bodies, films, and particles are suitable substrates for a biomatrix, and can be applied for the culture of complex living systems. In particular, the porous scaffold fabricated on the cells culture substrate promotes cell growth and survival and reproduces the three-dimensional environmental microcosm that is normally present in the living body. These reports show that the cell culture is greatly influenced by the fabricated structure. Moreover, the porous scaffold has to have a structure that is appropriate for the intended purpose; the scaffold system has to have a small surface so that the seeding density of cells is at maximum.

Culture systems in which osteoblasts were grown in a straight-line structure made of PI, whose width and depth were 5 μm have been reported. In this report, the substrate material used was PI alone and the fabricated structure was a linear shape. The culture of stromal marrow cells (OP9), interstitial cells generated from bone marrow, has been attracting research attention. This is because stromal marrow cells enhance growth factor production, and support multiplication and specialization of hematopoietic stem and precursor cells. Use of these cells has been applied through tissue engineering to generate blood and bone progenitors.

It is anticipated that fabricating fine structures and controlling the growth of different stem cells will allow the generation of sufficient cell populations for use in research or in the clinic setting. To this end, we thought to fabricate and evaluate a fine polymer-based structure in which cells can successfully align and proliferate. Polyimide (PI) has superior heat resistance, mechanical strength, and chemical stability. Therefore, PI is expected to withstand the high temperatures required for the sterilization process. PI-based microstructures have already been shown to be transferable by hot embossing and are therefore suitable for microelectromechanical systems (MEMS) fabrication processes. However, conventional PI is not transparent and has an opaque tan color, which would make it difficult to observe any cells cultured on PI sheets. Therefore, we focused on transparent PI, which recently became commercially available.