A Universal Coating Strategy for Controllable Functionalized Polymer Surfaces

Abstract

Development of a universal and stable surface coating, irrespective of surface chemistry or material characteristics, is highly desirable but has proved to be extremely challenging. Conventional coating strategies including the commonly used catechol surface coating are limited to either a certain type of substrates or weak and unreliable surface bonding. Here, a simple, robust, and universal surface coating method capable for attaching any stimuliresponsive glycidyl methacrylate (GMA)-based copolymer, consisting of one surface-adhesive moiety of epoxy groups and one stimuli-responsive moiety, to any type of hydrophobic and hydrophilic surfaces via a one-step ringopening reaction is proposed and demonstrated. The resultant GMA-based copolymers are not only strongly adhered on different substrates (e.g., silicon, polypropylene, polyvinyl chloride, indium tin oxide, polyethylene terephthalate, aluminum, glass, polydimethylsiloxane, and even polyvinylidene fluoride with low surface energy), but also are possessed distinct thermal-, pH-, and salt-responsive functions of bacterial killing, bacterial releasing, tunable multicolor fluorescence emission, and heavy metal detection. This coating method is also compatible with the directional quaternization of GMA-based copolymers for further improving surface adhesion and functionality. This study provides a simple yet universal coating method to solve the long-standing challenge of robust integration of stimuli-responsive polymers with strong adhesion between various polymers and substrates.

Soft Materials by Design: Unconventional Polymer Networks Give Extreme Properties

“…The commonly used covalent bonds for tough adhesion of hydrogels include carbon−carbon, carbon−nitrogen, carbon-sulfide, carbon−oxygen, and silicon− oxygen bonds (Figure 5c). 801 In order to form these covalent bonds, the hydrogels and substrates are usually designed to possess functional groups such as the cross-linkable unsaturated bond (to form carbon−carbon bond), 802 amine group (to form carbon−nitrogen bond), 49 thiol group (to form carbon-sulfide bond), 803 hydroxyl and carboxyl group (to form carbon−oxygen bond), and silanol group (to form silicon−oxygen bond) 804 (Figure 19a). According to the Lake−Thomas model, the intrinsic interfacial toughness Γ 0 inter of polymer chains covalently anchored on a substrate can be expressed as…”

“…The commonly used covalent bonds for tough adhesion of hydrogels include carbon–carbon, carbon–nitrogen, carbon-sulfide, carbon–oxygen, and silicon–oxygen bonds (Figure c) . In order to form these covalent bonds, the hydrogels and substrates are usually designed to possess functional groups such as the cross-linkable unsaturated bond (to form carbon–carbon bond), amine group (to form carbon–nitrogen bond), thiol group (to form carbon-sulfide bond), hydroxyl and carboxyl group (to form carbon–oxygen bond), and silanol group (to form silicon–oxygen bond) (Figure a). According to the Lake–Thomas model, the intrinsic interfacial toughness Γ 0 inter of polymer chains covalently anchored on a substrate can be expressed as where M inter is the number of covalently anchored polymer chains on a unit area of the substrate in the undeformed reference state, N is the number of Kuhn monomers per polymer chain, and U f is the lower value of the energy required to fracture either the Kuhn monomer or the covalent bond on the substrate.…”

Mechanisms and applications of bioinspired underwater/wet adhesives

“…In addition to the aforementioned applications, biologically inspired wet bonding surfaces can be widely used in many fields, 168,169 as shown in Figure 26. For instance, a biorobotic adhesive disc mimicking remoras can generate strong underwater adhesion on various surfaces, which can be potentially used on intelligent robots to hitchhike like remoras to monitor underwater situations.…”

Conductive Adhesive and Antibacterial Zwitterionic Hydrogel Dressing for Therapy of Full-Thickness Skin Wounds

“…In addition, hydrogels are hydrophilic, fully crosslinked polymeric materials that have enabled us to dynamically alter adhesion ability, leading to stable adhesion to the active epidermis. For instance, most as-prepared soft natural (gelatin, hyaluronic acid, and agar) or synthetic (polyAAm, polyHEAA, and polyNIPAm) hydrogels possess strong adhesion on common biomedical substrates (e.g., steel, titanium, glass, and ceramic), while the bonding energy is dramatically reduced once the excess exudates and toxins are absorbed ( Zhang et al, 2020a ; Zhang et al, 2020b ; Zhang et al, 2020c ; Mao et al, 2020 ; Zhang et al, 2021 ).…”