Original antifouling strategy: Polypropylene films modified with chitosan‐coated silver nanoparticles

Abstract

A new coating strategy of polypropylene (PP) films with silver nanoparticles (AgNPs) is proposed to obtain surfaces with antifouling properties. As a first step, the photograft polymerization is used to produce polyacrylic acid-grafted PP (PAA-grafted PP) films. A green AgNP synthesis is used by thermal reduction of AgNO 3 with amino groups of chitosan (CS), which controls ion diffusion and stabilizes nanoparticles. AgNP/CS complexes are adsorbed on PAA-grafted PP by electrostatic interactions, yielding AgNP/CS-coated PP films. These films show an excellent antimicrobial activity, even for AgNP contents as low as 0.08 wt %, reducing more than 4 log units in the viable Staphylococcus aureus concentration or inducing Escherichia coli death. This trend is consistent with an adequate amount of small AgNP adsorbed in an organized manner within a thin surface layer. Therefore, the antimicrobial activity of this film seems to be more than promising, used as an active surface for a wide range of applications.A suitable combination of a natural and a synthetic polymer improves the properties of the resulting material, which expands its application field. This methodology of synthesis has proved to be appropriate in areas such as biomedical materials, controlled Additional Supporting Information may be found in the online version of this article.

Immobilization of Heteroatom-Doped Carbon Dots onto Nonpolar Plastics for Antifogging, Antioxidant, and Food Monitoring Applications

“…After the grafting reaction, the PP surface was washed thoroughly with water. FTIR analysis of the poly­(acrylic acid)-coated PP film (PPAA) showed a significant peak at 1728 cm –1 , which was due to the stretching absorption for carboxylic acid (−COOH) of PAA . As for the NPSC-dots, the surface contained abundant hydroxyl and amine functional groups, but they overlapped in the spectrum, indicating a broad spectrum at 3330–3644 cm –1 .…”