Stability And Antifouling Activity Of Polymer Brush Grafted From Hybrid Coatings On Stainless Steel

Pipes and equipment made of stainless steel have been extensively used in many fields. Steel biofouling is a problem that generates huge economic losses. Therefore antifouling surface modification materials will have great prospect applications. To keep stainless steel equipment away from bio-corrosion, it is crucial to immobilize antifouling coatings to prevent bacterial adhesion.Grafting from material surface, polymer brushes can modify surface with various functional groups. To protect material from biofouling, architecture and properties of the brush layer, such as wettability and grafting density, can be modified via material design. In this work, a base layer, which consists of polydopamine and silane coupling agents were prepared. Three brush samples were prepared by the grafting-from method using SI-ATRP method. The wettability, stability and antifouling properties of the brush samples were investigated.Effects of brush architecture and surface wettability on the stability of polymer brush layer were investigated. Samples tethered with less hydrophilic and hydrophilic di-block polymer brushes show long-term stability in artificial sea water.Effects of architecture and surface functional groups of polymer brush on antifouling ability and antibacterial adhesion were discussed. The protein-like fractions of extracellular polymer substances from biofilms are a complex mixture of high molecular weight macromolecules with variable molecular weight. Therefore, the adsorption of two kinds of proteins with large difference in molecular weight on samples tethered with three kinds of polymer brushes was studied.Because the inter-molecular and intra-molecular interaction is different, the structure and wettability of tethered hydrophilic polymer brushes responds to solvent treatment. The antifouling ability changes with grafting density, structure and wettability of the tethered brushes.