Tailored combinatorial microcompartments via self-organization of microobjects: Assembly, characterization and cell studies.

A novel concept to obtain cell microenvironments by microobject assembly at the water/air interface is reported. Since the orientation of 30 μm sized polymer cubes and their capillary force assembly is found to be controlled by surface wettability, afforded by coating the initially exposed surfaces by gold and self-assembled monolayers, unique niches in closely packed arrays of cubes with vertex up orientation can be realized. The random assembly of distinctly different cubes, pre-functionalized or surface-structured exclusively on their top surface, facilitates the massively parallel generation of different microenvironments in a combinatorial manner, which paves the way to future systematic structure-property relationship studies with cells.