Patent ID: 8247064

Claim:
A modified surface wherein the adhesion or attachment of cells, proteins and/or prions to the modified surface has been minimised or prevented by adjusting the Lifshitz-van der Waals (LW) surface free energy of an unmodified surface to be equal to or approximately equal to the Lifshitz-van der Waals (LW) surface free energy of the cells, proteins and/or prions in a solution and/or whole blood surrounding the surface, wherein the surface is modified with a coating of modified diamond-like carbon (DLC), wherein the coated surface inhibits bacterial adhesion and colonisation, thrombus adhesion to the surface and foulant formation, wherein the surface is one which comes into contact with cells, proteins and/or prions within a living human or animal body, wherein the LW surface free energy of the modified surface is in a range of about 25 mN/m to about 45 mN/m, and wherein the adhesion or attachment of said cells, proteins and/or prions is minimised or prevented by modifying the surface free energy γ LW surface of the surface in accordance with the Lifshitz-van der Waals (LW) surface free energy of the cells, proteins and/or prions so that: γ LW surface≈γ LW S,Min wherein γ LW S,Min is the minimum level of attachment to a surface S and is defined as follows: √{square root over (γ LW S,Min )}=(½)(√{square root over (γ LW cells and/or proteins and/or prions )}+√{square root over (γ LW solution and/or whole blood )}) where γ LW cells, proteins and/or prions is the LW surface free energy of the cells, proteins and/or prions, and γ LW solution and/or whole blood is the LW surface free energy of the solution and/or of whole blood.