Fig. 1. Schematic of the microcontact printing method. (A) A PDMS stamp is prepared from a silicon master structure and `inked' with a hydrophobic alkanethiol. The thiol pattern is stamped onto a gold-coated coverslip, forming self-assembled monolayers. The remaining regions are blocked with a protein-resistant hydrophilic alkanethiol. ECM proteins now selectively adsorb to the hydrophobic areas of the coverslip. (B) The PDMS stamp used in this study consists of 2x9 fields, each containing a unique arrangement of squared dots varying in size and distance (a, length of dots in µm; d, centre to centre distance of dots in µm). The theoretical protein coverage for each field is given as a percentage.