4: Engineering Surfaces Check Access

Surface modification is a crucial step during the fabrication of a microsystem. The substrate material may not have the desired surface properties, such as wettability, conductivity or surface chemistry. Selecting convenient molecules and protocols for depositing a functional layer or a chemically active molecule needs to be considered. Patterned surface modification has been developed for specific experimentation. This chapter presents an overview of the most common methods for engineering surfaces or for tuning the interface behaviour.