Abstract
Polymer modification of metallic and inorganic substrates represents an important strategy to determine key surface properties, including wetting, adhesion, and biomolecular interactions. The versatility of polymer chemistry and surface-grafting techniques has enabled the preparation of a wide array of functional surfaces that exhibit enhanced utility relative to pristine, unmodified materials. However, despite recent progress, discovering new polymer compositions for surface modification is essential to address ongoing challenges related to surface properties and functional interfaces. This manuscript describes surface grafting using fluorinated polymer zwitterions by surface-initiated atom transfer radical polymerization (SI-ATRP). The resultant polymer-coated substrates exhibited wetting characteristics intermediate between those of zwitterionic and fluorinated polymer brushes, with unusually large contact angle hysteresis values that are indicative of polymer response to the contacting fluid. Notably, surfaces functionalized with fluorinated polymer zwitterions exhibited impressive resistance to protein fouling with bovine serum albumin (BSA) and lysozyme.
| Original language | English |
|---|---|
| Pages (from-to) | 32-36 |
| Number of pages | 5 |
| Journal | Polymer Chemistry |
| Volume | 14 |
| Issue number | 1 |
| DOIs | |
| State | Published - Nov 30 2022 |
| Externally published | Yes |
Funding
The authors acknowledge support for this work from the Department of Energy, Office of Basic Energy Sciences, Division of Materials Science and Engineering (DE-SC0008876) for the preparation of bioinspired materials and smart interfaces, as well as support from the National Institutes of Health (AR069079 and CA196947) for integration of fluorinated components into water soluble polymers. XPS experiments were performed at the Harvard University Center for Nanoscale Systems (CNS), a member of the National Nanotechnology Coordinated Infrastructure Network (NNCI), which is supported by the National Science Foundation under NSF award 1541959.
| Funders | Funder number |
|---|---|
| Harvard University Center for Nanoscale Systems | |
| National Science Foundation | 1541959 |
| National Institutes of Health | CA196947, AR069079 |
| U.S. Department of Energy | |
| Basic Energy Sciences | |
| Cognitive Neuroscience Society | |
| Division of Materials Sciences and Engineering | DE-SC0008876 |