Tailoring conductive inverse opal films with anisotropic elliptical porous patterns for nerve cell orientation

BACKGROUND: The nervous system is critical to the operation of various organs and systems, while novel methods with designable neural induction remain to exploit. RESULTS: Here, we present a conductive inverse opal film with anisotropic elliptical porous patterns for nerve orientation induction. The films are fabricated based on polystyrene (PS) inverse opal scaffolds with periodical elliptical porous structure and poly(3,4-ethylenedioxythiophene):poly(styrenesulfonate) (PEDOT:PSS) mixed polyacrylamide (PAAm) polymers fillers. It is demonstrated that the anisotropic elliptical surface topography allows the nerve cells to be induced into orientation connected with the stretching direction. Because of the anisotropic features of the film which can be stretched into different directions, nerve cells can be induced to grow in one or two directions, forming a neural network and promoting the connection of nerve cells. It is worth mentioning that the PEDOT:PSS-doped PAAm hydrogels endow the film with conductive properties, which makes the composite films be a suitable candidate for neurites growth and differentiation. CONCLUSIONS: All these features of the conductive and anisotropic inverse opal films imply their great prospects in biomedical applications. GRAPHICAL ABSTRACT: [Image: see text] SUPPLEMENTARY INFORMATION: The online version contains supplementary material available at 10.1186/s12951-022-01340-w.