Graphene, owing to its inherent chemical inertness, biocompatibility, and mechanical flexibility, has great potential in guiding cell behaviors such as adhesion and differentiation. However, due to the two-dimensional (2D) nature of graphene, the microfabrication of graphene into micro/nanoscale patterns has been widely adopted for guiding cellular assembly. In this study, we report crumpled graphene, i.e., monolithically defined graphene with a nanoscale wavy surface texture, as a tissue engineering platform that can efficiently promote aligned C2C12 mouse myoblast cell differentiation. We imparted out-of-plane, nanoscale crumpled morphologies to flat graphene via compressive strain-induced deformation. When C2C12 mouse myoblast cells were seeded on the uniaxially crumpled graphene, not only were the alignment and elongation promoted at a single-cell level but also the differentiation and maturation of myotubes were enhanced compared to that on flat graphene. These results demonstrate the utility of the crumpled graphene platform for tissue engineering and regenerative medicine for skeletal muscle tissues.
S.N. gratefully acknowledges support from DTRA (HDTRA1620298), NSF (MRSEC DMR-1720633 and DMR-1708852), KRISS (KRISS\\u20132018\\u2013GP2018-0012), ONR (N00014-17-1-2830), and NASA ECF (NNX16AR56G). D.K. acknowledges financial support from NRF (2016R1C1B1009689, 2019R1H1A1080221, 2019R1A2C1090056), MOTIE (20000512), the new faculty research fund of Ajou University, and the Ajou University research fund. Experiments were carried out in part at the Materials Research Laboratory Central Research Facilities, Holonyak Micro and Nanotechnology Laboratory, and the Beckman Institute Imaging Technology Group at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. This research was partially supported by the NSF through the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign Materials Research Science and Engineering Center DMR-1720633.
