Bionic anti-adhesive electrode coupled with maize leaf microstructures and TiO2 coating

Abstract

Recently, the electrosurgical electrode used in minimally invasive surgery is becoming more and more popular as it causes only a little trauma and slight pain, and has other advantages. However, its high working temperature, above 400 °C, often results in serious tissue adhesion on the surface of the electrode, which seriously affects the normal operation of the surgery. In this paper, we develop a novel type of electrode with a coupled bionic anti-adhesive surface by fabricating microstructures inspired by the maize leaf and coating a thin layer of TiO₂ film on it. The grid-like microstructures inspired by the maize leaf were fabricated by laser marking technology. Then, the sol–gel method was chosen to prepare the TiO₂ coating. The surface characterization of the electrode substrate, bionic electrode and coupled bionic electrode was carried out after fabrication. Afterwards, the wettability and components of these were measured and analysed, respectively. Furthermore, in order to determine the adhesion behaviour of different electrodes, electric cutting experiments were performed on fresh isolated animal liver tissue in detail. Finally, the relationships between adhesion mass, cutting time and cutting depth were also measured. The results show that the coupled bionic electrode surface has the most effective anti-adhesion performance compared with the bare original electrode surface under a high temperature. The investigations carried out in this work offer a promising way to design and fabricate anti-adhesive surfaces working at higher temperatures.