Decoupling surface stiffness from surface chemistry: Impact on bacterial adhesion and retention under shear conditions

Abstract

Understanding how substrate mechanics influence bacterial adhesion and retention is essential for controlling biofilm formation on synthetic materials. Studies on soft polymers such as PDMS are often confounded by uncontrolled variations in surface chemistry and topography. In this work, a PS-PIB bilayer system was designed to decouple surface chemistry from mechanics, enabling independent control of stiffness while maintaining constant surface properties. Static adhesion assays with Pseudomonas aeruginosa PAO1 showed that initial attachment was insensitive to substrate modulus when surface chemistry and roughness were held constant. In contrast, retention under shear flow decreased with increasing stiffness and correlated more closely with the work of separation obtained from nanoindentation experiments. This parameter, which integrates both adhesive and dissipative contributions, is introduced as an empirical descriptor of interfacial mechanical resistance. Retention data were described by a power-law model consistent with stochastic frameworks of multivalent adhesion, reflecting population heterogeneity in the number and strength of adhesive contacts. Altogether, these findings suggest that viscoelastic dissipation is a key factor influencing P. aeruginosa PAO1 detachment under flow and highlight the need for future studies using bacterial mutants and diverse species to assess the generality of this correlation across different adhesion strategies.