Pascal Colpo

• PhD
• Scientific Officer at European Commission

The European Commission's Joint Research Center (JRC) offers leading researchers from across Europe and beyond access to its world-class facilities and laboratories, enabling cutting-edge experimental research, collaboration and capacity building with a European dimension. This is done through the JRC's Open Access to Research Infrastructures progr...

African swine fever (ASF) is an acute, highly contagious and deadly infectious disease. It is a threat to animal health with major potential economic and societal impact. Despite decades of ASF vaccine research, still some gaps in knowledge are hindering the development of a functional vaccine. Worth mentioning are gaps in understanding the mechani...

Among the physical and chemical properties of nanomaterials, hydrophobicity is considered to play a key role in their impact on the environment. Changes in hydrophobicity resulting from abiotic and biotic processes can be used to predict the behaviours of nanoparticles (NPs) in the environment (e.g., aggregation, toxicity, and bioaccumulation). Hyd...

Thin films of the (GaxIn1-x)2O3 compound have been prepared on Si substrates by the aerosol deposition method with variation of the Ga concentration (x) from 0 to 0.95. Indium chloride (InCl3) and gallium nitrate (Ga(NO3)3) were used as precursors. The morphology, chemical composition, and crystal structure of the obtained films have been investiga...

Introduction The role of the human immune system in pathologic responses to chemicals including nanomaterials was identified as a gap in current hazard assessments. However, the complexity of the human immune system as well as interspecies variations make the development of predictive toxicity tests challenging. In the present study, we have analys...

In this paper, new aeromaterials are proposed on the basis of titania thin films deposited using atomic layer deposition (ALD) on a sacrificial network of ZnO microtetrapods. The technology consists of two technological steps applied after ALD, namely, thermal treatment at different temperatures and etching of the sacrificial template. Two procedur...

The interaction of semiconductor nanoparticles with bio-molecules attracts increasing interest of researchers, considering the reactivity of nanoparticles and the possibility to control their properties remotely giving mechanical, thermal, or electrical stimulus to the surrounding bio-environment. This work reports on a systematic comparative study...

A series of Zn1-xMgxO thin films with x ranging from 0 to 0.8 were prepared by spin coating and aerosol spray pyrolysis deposition on Si and quartz substrates. The morphology, composition, nano-crystalline structure, and optical and vibration properties of the prepared films were studied using scanning electron microscopy (SEM), energy dispersive X...

A methodology to miniaturize mechanical tests of metal alloys based on membrane deformation was developed in this investigation. The buildup of this new path for miniaturization tests requires small amounts of material for testing. This is of particular interest for irradiated structural nuclear materials. Micrometric metallic circular membranes we...

A dual layer PVD coating consisting of a CrN layer on top of a CoCrMo(C) S-phase underlayer (CrN/S) was deposited on a low-carbon wrought CoCrMo alloy discs and CoCrMo Stellite® 21 spheres. The tribocorrosion response of the uncoated CoCrMo tribopairs and coated CrN/S tribopairs was studied under reciprocating sliding conditions in Ringer's and dil...

Large-sized 2D semiconductor materials have gained significant attention for their fascinating properties in various applications. In this work, we demonstrate the fabrication of nanoperforated ultrathin β-Ga2O3 membranes of a nanoscale thickness. The technological route includes the fabrication of GaN membranes using the Surface Charge Lithography...

Hypothesis In this original work, we aim to control both the surface wetting and fluorescence properties of extremely ordered and porous conducting polymer nanotubes prepared by soft template electropolymerization and post-grafting. For reaching this aim, various substituents of different hydrophobicity and fluorescence were post-grafted and the po...

In this paper we demonstrate the fabrication of a SERS detector based on GaN ultrathin membrane. The GaN membranes are elaborated by the so-called Surface Charge Lithography approach. The obtained membranes are functionalized by 20 nm Au nanodots and characterized by different tools in order to demonstrate the material quality and sensitivity enhan...

The development of sensitive methods for the determination of potential bacterial contamination is of upmost importance for environmental monitoring and food safety. In this study, we present a new method combining a fast pre-enrichment step using a microporous cryogel and a detection and identification step using antimicrobial peptides (AMPs) and...

The European Commission‘s Joint Research Centre (JRC) gives leading researchers from across Europe and beyond access to its world-class facilities and laboratories, enabling state-of-the-art experimental research, collaboration and capacity building with a European dimension. It does so through the programme for open access to JRC research infrastr...

Plastic particulates in the environment pose an increasing concern for regulatory bodies due to their potential risk to higher organisms (including humans) as they enter the food chain. Nanoplastics (defined here as smaller than 1 μm) are particularly challenging to detect and analyze at environmentally relevant concentrations and in biological mat...

Nanoplastic particulates (pNP) are widely considered as being potentially harmful to the environment and living organisms while also being technically difficult to detect and identify in the presence of biological matrices. In this study, we describe a method for the extraction and subsequent Raman analysis of pNP present in the tissues of salt-wat...

The European Commission's Joint Research Centre (JRC) has made significant investments in the construction and operationalisation of unique research infrastructures in several science and technology domains. Many of these facilities are instrumental in accomplishing JRC's mission. They also allow JRC staff to maintain and develop their scientific c...

In this paper, fabrication of a new material is reported, the so-called Aero-Ga2O3 or Aerogallox, which represents an ultra-porous and ultra-lightweight three-dimensional architecture made from interconnected microtubes of gallium oxide with nanometer thin walls. The material is fabricated using epitaxial growth of an ultrathin layer of gallium nit...

Development of sensitive methods for the determination of E. coli bacteria contamination in water distribution systems is of paramount importance to ensure the microbial safety of drinking water. This work presents a new sensing platform enabling the fast detection of bacteria in field samples by using specific antibodies as the biorecognition elem...

Controlling the growth of nanostructures onto surfaces is fundamental to develop new materials for various fields such as sensing or biomedical applications. Here, we study for the first time the influence of micropatterned substrates on the growth of nanotubes using a templateless electropolymerization approach. The influence of both the nature of...

Hydrophobicity is an important parameter for the risk assessment of chemicals, but standardised quantitative methods for the determination of hydrophobicity cannot be applied to nanomaterials. Here we describe a method for the direct quantification of the surface energy and hydrophobicity of nanomaterials. The quantification is obtained by comparin...

The successful integration of graphene in future technologies, such as filtration and nanoelectronics, depends on the ability to introduce controlled nanostructured defects in graphene. In this work, Raman spectroscopy is used to investigate the induction of disorder in graphene via gallium ion beam bombardment. Two configurations of CVD-grown grap...

Multi-functionalized nanoparticles are of great interest in biotechnology and biomedicine, especially for diagnostic and therapeutic purposes. However, at the moment the characterization of complex, multi-functional nanoparticles is still challenging and this hampers the development of advanced nanomaterials for biological applications. In this wor...

With the progress of technologies for telecommunication, synthetic biology, chemistry, additive manufacturing and nanoscale processes, many opportunities arise, allowing more effective and innovative production and the achievement of results with great potential both on the technical and commercial sides. At the same time however, rapid technologic...

Endocrine Disrupting Compounds (EDCs) are chemical substances shown to interfere with endogenous hormones affecting the endocrine, immune and nervous systems of mammals. EDCs are the causative agents of diseases including reproductive disorders and cancers. This highlights the urgency to develop fast and sensitive methods to detect EDCs, which are...

Nanomechanical monitoring of known mechanisms of membrane poration mediated by host defense peptides is reported. Quartz Crystal Microbalance with Dissipation monitoring used to probe the process of antimicrobial poration in model phospholipid bilayers offers a straightforward method for mechanically differential kinetic measurements of membrane-me...

Characterisation of engineered nanomaterials (NMs) is of outmost importance for the assessment of the potential risks arising from their extensive use. NMs display indeed a large variety of physico-chemical properties that drastically affect their interaction with biological systems. Among them, hydrophobicity is an important property that is never...

Invited for this month's cover are the collaborating groups of Dr. Thierry Darmanin at Université Côte d'Azur, France and Dr. François Rossi at JRC European Commission, Italy. The cover picture shows a novel strategy for preparing substrates having a rose-petal effect (high water adhesion). The micropatterning specifications (pillar diameter and pi...

Surfaces with high water adhesion properties are promising materials for different applications in the field of water treatment and management such as for water harvesting systems or oil/water separation membranes. Herein we developed rose petal-like substrates that demonstrate interesting parahydrophobic character. This bioinspired material mimics...

Ultraviolet (UV) radiation, temperature, and time can degrade proteins. Here, the authors show that gold nanoparticles significantly protect human serum albumin from denaturation when exposed to "stressing" conditions such as UV irradiation and sustained exposure in suboptimal conditions. In particular, the authors show that gold nanoparticles sign...

After the publication of this work [1] it was noticed that the author name 'Patrizia Urbán' was incorrectly spelt as 'Patrizia Urbán'. This has now been corrected in the author list.

The cover picture shows a novel strategy to prepare substrates having a rose-petal effect (high water adhesion). By controlling both the specification of square micropillars (diameter and pitch) and electrodeposited nanostructures, interesting parahydrophobic character was observed having extremely high water contact angles (up to 160°) and complet...

Microarray technology was developed in the early 1990s to measure the transcription levels of thousands of genes in parallel. The basic premise of high-density arraying has since been expanded to create cell microarrays. Cells on chip are powerful experimental tools for high-throughput and multiplex screening of samples or cellular functions. Minia...

Amorphous carbon films exhibit attractive optical and surface properties. In this work, modified amorphous carbon films incorporating nitroxide groups (α-CNO) have been obtained searching for a condensed analogue to classical soft antifouling materials. Thin films deposited by reactive magnetron sputtering in air discharges at varying power conditi...

Background The constant increase of the use of nanomaterials in consumer products is making increasingly urgent that standardized and reliable in vitro test methods for toxicity screening be made available to the scientific community. For this purpose, the determination of the cellular dose, i.e. the amount of nanomaterials effectively in contact w...

The advances in proteomics and genomics have led to discover a lot of biomarkers that can potentially be used as diagnostic and prognostic indicators of diseases. Simultaneously, a huge research effort has been invested in developing biosensors that could monitor the interaction of biological materials. Such sensors are required to be fast, real ti...

Given the increasing variety of manufactured nanomaterials, suitable, robust, standardized in vitro screening methods are needed to study the mechanisms by which they can interact with biological systems. The in vitro evaluation of interactions of nanoparticles (NPs) with living cells is challenging due to the complex behaviour of NPs, which may in...

We propose a simple method to determine the structure and morphology of nanoparticle protein complexes. By combining a separation method with online size measurements, density measurements and circular dichroism, we could identify the number of proteins bound to each nanoparticle and their secondary structure changes in the complex. This method pro...

The integration of gold nanoparticles (Au NPs) or nanostructures on solid surfaces for developing nanostructured biointerfaces has become a major research topic in the field of nanobiotechnology in particular for the development of a new generation of multifunctional bioanalytical platforms. This has led to considerable research efforts for develop...

Current developments in the field of bioanalytical tools for research and diagnostic purposes tend to propose innovative and multifunctional solutions for studies of biomolecular interactions. Main requirements are expressed not only by sensitive and multiplex detection of binding phenomena. Also reliable identification of interactants is of big in...

In the context of the extensive use of engineered nanomaterials (ENMs) in consumer products, industrial applications and nanomedicine, there is an important need of new methods for an exhaustive characterization of their physicochemical properties. Among them, surface hydrophobicity is considered as a key factor to be controlled, in particular for...

The estrogen receptor protein (ER) can bind a vast number of organic pollutants widely spread in the environment and collectively known as Endocrine Disrupting Chemicals, EDCs. Its broad selectivity makes it an ideal bio-recognition element for the detection of EDCs. Here we describe the strategy and rationale for the design of ER based biosensors...

This live demonstration is centered around a field programmable gate array (FPGA) based image processing system, or smart camera, monitoring in real-time cell biomarkers. The system relies on the ability to monitor in-vitro different cell reactions via exogenous fluorescent markers, and extract quantitative metrics related to the monitored phenomen...

This work presents the development and optimization of two fabrication methods that combine plasma polymerization and electron beam lithography techniques for producing chemical patterns at the sub-micro scale. The first method uses sacrificial resist as mask to produce the functionalization of the bioadhesive areas and the second method consists i...

State-of-the-art techniques for measuring and monitoring gene level expression rely on messenger RNA (mRNA) extraction and quantification, usually based on the concept of reverse transcription polymerase chain reaction. In this paper, we take advantage of capabilities of image segmentation algorithms for monitoring target cell surface biomarkers us...

This chapter highlights the specific challenges related to in vitro toxicity testing of nanomaterials. The difficulties presented are related to the very complex behavior of nanomaterials during the in vitro tests, namely, dissolution, aggregation, sedimentation, and formation of a protein corona. All these aspects modify the physicochemical charac...

The organized cell encapsulating bead array (OCEBA) is an integrated tool useful for real-time and label-free detection of secreted molecules. The OCEBA novel cell chip is composed of two substrates, one allowing localized cell culture and the other one constituting the sensitive layer detection. Evidence of the real-time detection will be here pre...

A SPR sensing method comprising the steps of: providing a SPR sensor comprising a SPR supporting sensor surface and contacting a sample to be analysed with the sensor surface. At least one resonance condition at said SPR supporting sensor surface is monitored by illuminating the sensor surface with an SPR exciting test light beam and sensing the re...

Two methods for protein patterning on antifouling surfaces have been applied to analyze the density and bioactivity of the proteins after deposition. Microcontact printing has been used as a technique to transfer fibronectin through conformal contact, while piezoelectric deposition has been employed as a non-contact technique for producing arrays o...

In this work, we present a method to produce micro and nanostructured surfaces containing bioadhesive features embedded in an antifouling matrix. These surfaces are fabricated by combining plasma polymerization and electron beam lithography. This combination allows the fabrication of structured surfaces in just two steps and without the use of solv...

We present a novel approach to tackle the most common drawback of using surface plasmon resonance for analyte screening in complex biological matrices - the nonspecific binding to the sensor chip surface. By using a perforated membrane supported by a polymeric gel structure at the evanescent wave penetration depth, we have fabricated a non-fouling...

Nanostructured surfaces have proven to be effective in controlling the electric field distribution and triggering a series of interesting physical effects. In particular, ordered metallic lattices with a typical size of the same order of magnitude of the wavelength of the incident radiation exhibit extraordinary transmission and reflection properti...

The immobilization of biotin on transducer surfaces is a very important step for the fabrication of biosensors for many applications (immunoassay, DNA-hybridization assays, targeted imaging). Biotinylated polypyrroles have been studied and tested but gave rise to problems of polymerization and stability due to the intrinsic properties of pyrrole. A...

We present chemical modification of self assembled monolayers (SAMs) using electron and ion-beam lithographies. We used thiolated polyethylene oxide (PEO) SAMs on gold to fabricate chemically contrasting patterns at the nanoscale. Patterned surfaces were characterized by X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy (XPS), time of flight-secondary ion mass spec...

Cellular microarray developments and its applications are the next step after DNA and protein microarrays. The choice of the surface chemistry of the substrates used for the implementation of this technique, that must favor proper protein immobilization while avoiding cell adhesion on the nonspotted areas, presents a complex challenge. This is a ke...

Microarrays are promising tools for cell isolation and detection. However, they have yet to be widely applied in biology. This stems from a lack of demonstration of their sensitivity and compatibility with complex biological samples, and a lack of proof that their use does not induce aberrant cellular effects. Herein, we characterized and optimized...

We present an overview of the possibilities offered by plasma technologies, in particular the combination plasma polymers deposition, colloidal lithography, e-beam lithography and microcontact printing, to produce micro- and nanostructured surfaces with chemical and topographical contrast for applications in nanobiotechnology. It is shown that chem...

Physical interactions of cells with the adhesive substrates of the microenvironment as well as the presence of the soluble growth factors are important for the proliferation capacity of neural stem cells. We have used biofunctionalized surface domains microcontact printed with either synthetic polyaminoacid poly-L-lysine or extracellular matrix (EC...

The present study demonstrates that nanosphere lithography and electro-polymerization can be successfully combined to produce bioactive protein nanoarrays. In particular, we describe a method to produce well-defined nanoarrays of polypyrrole functionalized with biomolecules. The nanoarrayed surfaces were fabricated on gold coated surface plasmon re...

Thin films of zirconia have been deposited by an Inductively Coupled Plasma Assisted CVD (ICP-PACVD) reactor from tetra (tert-butoxy)-zircon precursor diluted in Ar and O2 gas mixture. An independent RF generator is used to control carefully the substrate negative bias voltage during the deposition. Zirconia thin films, with thickness up to 10 micr...

Nanostructured surfaces presenting chemical or topographical patterns are now being increasingly developed in nanobiotechnology. Major applications are related to cell culture models and biodetection. We show that plasma technologies, in particular the combination plasma polymers deposition and etching, together with colloidal lithography, e-beam l...

The last decade has witnessed a significant increase in interest in whole-cell biosensors for diverse applications, as well as a rapid and continuous expansion of array technologies. The combination of these two disciplines has yielded the notion of whole-cell array biosensors. We present a potential manifestation of this idea by describing the pri...

We report on the application low-temperature plasmas for roughening Si surfaces which is becoming increasingly important for a number of applications ranging from Si quantum dots to cell and protein attachment for devices such as “laboratory on a chip” and sensors. It is a requirement that Si surface roughening is scalable and is a single-step proc...

The development of advanced biosensor devices for very sensitive detection is highly required for many applications. The careful design of the bio-interface on the transducer surface is known to be one of the major bottlenecks for the development of high performance sensing devices. This paper reviews the emerging role of nanopatterned surfaces as...

Synchrotron-based X-ray photoemission electron microscopy (X-PEEM), atomic force microscopy (AFM), time of flight secondary ion mass spectrometry (ToF-SIMS) and X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy (XPS) have been used to visualize and characterize plasma polymerized acrylic acid (ppAA) and poly ethylene oxide (PEO)-like microstructures. Micropatterned...

Summary 10.1002/9783527630455.ch7.abs This chapter contains sections titled: * Bacterial Adhesion to Biomaterials: Biofilm Formation * Biofilm Prevention Strategies * Role of Plasma Processing in Biofouling Prevention * Case Study: Plasma-deposited Poly(ethylene oxide)-like Films for the Prevention of Biofilm Formation * Summary * References

We investigate nanostructured surfaces consisting of a hexagonal lattice of polymeric pillars embedded in a gold matrix. These systems are prepared by a new fabrication technique based on plasma assisted deposition and colloidal lithography. A complete characterization of such surfaces is performed by angle resolved reflectance and transmittance me...

Stem cell technology combined with emerging surface nano/micro-technologies provides a new tool for better understanding of the mechanisms involved in cell fate decisions and compound-induced adverse reactions. This article provides state-of-the-art on the development of modern multiparameter bio-tests based on interactions between neural stem cell...

refs. 2-3-31-32-33 Micropatterned surfaces were produced by a spatial arrangement of different functional domains by a combination of plasma polymerisation and photolithography: non-fouling patterns were made of (PEO)-like polymers obtained by pulsed plasma polymerization of diethylene glycol dimethyl ether while fouling surfaces were composed of P...

The interaction of biological systems with synthetic material surfaces is an important issue for many biological applications such as implanted devices, tissue engineering, cell-based sensors and assays, and more generally biologic studies performed ex vivo. To ensure reliable outcomes, the main challenge resides in the ability to design and develo...

Atomic force microscopy (AFM) indentation technique is used for characterization of mechanical properties of fluorocarbon (CF(x)) thin films obtained from C(4)F(8) gas by plasma enhanced chemical vapour deposition at low r.f. power (5-30 W) and d.c. bias potential (10-80 V). This particular deposition method renders films with good hydrophobic prop...

Microarrays of fibronectin and other extracellular matrix (ECM) proteins were fabricated on plasma-deposited poly( ethyleneoxide) (PEO-like) film coated glass slides to study adhesion of stem cells. The arrays were generated by using a non-contact printing technology. The stability and the quality of the spots of fibronectin, used as protein model,...

New fabrication technologies and, in particular, new nanotechnologies, have provided biomaterial and biomedical scientists with enormous possibilities when designing customized surfaces that can be used as novel supports for cell culture studies or in other biomedical applications as biosensors. The main issue now is how to effectively design these...

A recessed disk nanoelectrode array sensor, improving hydrogen peroxide determination is reported here. The nanoarray of electrodes is fabricated on a gold surface by using nanosphere lithography. The active surface of the obtained array was subsequently modified, by electrodeposition, with Prussian Blue (PB) and polypyrrole (PPy), in order to obta...

A contact-stripping method for micro-patterning nanobed arrays, based on structured poly(methyl methacrylate) (PMMA) stamps and using a nanoimprinter apparatus, which allows careful control of the temperature and pressure during the contact stripping, was presented. The rapid contact-stripping method allows patterning over large areas with good rep...