Adsorption Studies with AFM of Human Plasma Fibrinogen on Silicon Surfaces

Fibrinogen (FGN) plays an important role in the clotting of blood. Human plasma fibrinogen (HPF) is a protein that readily adsorbs on biomaterial surfaces. The purpose of this experiment was to use the Atomic Force Microscope to study the adsorption of HPF molecules or FGN onto several silicon surfaces with different orientations and resistivities. The size of the FGN molecules found to be somewhat different of Si(111), (100) and (110) were compared to the size of the FGN molecules in solution (45 nm in length, the end dynodes measures to be 6.5 nm in diameter, and the middle dynode measures to be 5 nm in diameter. For this study, the CPR (Thermo-microscope) Atomic Force Microscope (AFM) was used to observe the amount of fibrinogen molecules adsorbed by Si (111) with a resistance of .0281-.0261 $\Omega $ \textbullet cm, Si (111) with a resistance of 1 $\Omega $ \textbullet cm, Si (100), and Si (110) surfaces. In finding any single fibrinogen molecules, the appropriate image scans and measurements were taken. After collection and analysis of the data, it was found from AFM that the fibrinogen molecules found on Si (110) mostly resembled fibrinogen molecules found in solution. The other images showed that the fibrinogen molecules adsorbed on Silicon substrates is significantly greater ($\sim $10-20 {\%}) than those in solution.