Anti-fouling polymers

Hydrophilic antimicrobial surfaces are generally achieved by grafting so-called anti-fouling polymers to surfaces. These polymers are discussed in the following section. 

Figure 15.12 Schematic overview of the most commonly used anti-fouling polymers.

The anti-fouling property rejection protein adsorption is primarily based on the hydrophilicity of polymer surfaces, because there exists a characteristic relation between the amount of protein adsorption and the surface-hydrophilicity, as shown in Fig. 2. One of the most proper quantities identifying the hydrophilicity (or hydrophobicity) of a surface is the ylw value. As seen from Fig. 1, Wu,w increases with the increasing ylw or hydrophobicity, but, after passing a maximum, decreases as ylw becomes much higher. 

T Sata, Modification of properties of ion exchange membranes. III. Interaction between ion exchange membranes and surface active agents, Colloid Polym. Sci., 1978, 256, 52-67 YD. Grebenyuk, R.D. Chebotareva, S. Peters and V Linkov, Surface modification of anion exchange membranes to enhance anti-fouling characteristics, Desalination, 1998, 115, 313. 

Functionalization of polymer surfaces using surface-initiated ATRP (SI-ATRP) is a convenient tool for making various functional materials, particularly for preparing anti-fouling and anti-bacterial surfaces, membranes, and for... 

Similarly, blending the PHA with the anti-fouling agent 4,5-dichloro-2-n-octyl-4-isothiazolin-3-one (DCOI) improved the polymer s stability towards... 

The other example, a polymer-bound fungicide, is found in the copolymerization of pentachlorophenyl acrylate with vinyl acetate and ethyl acrylate. This pentachlorophenol-based product could have use as an anti-fouling agent in marine coatings. In this case it was necessary to copolymerize with ethyl acrylate. The homopolymer was found to be too hydrophobic to allow decomposition of the polymer and allow release of the active agent in sufficiently high concentrations to have the appropriate biocide effect. 

In the early 70s it was announced that organotin compounds had been bonded to such plastics as polystyrene, polymethacrylate, polyester, polyvinyl chloride, and cellulose polymer backbones. " These have been termed organometallic polymers (OMP). Triethyltin hydroxide was allowed to react with a copolymer of styrene-maleic anhydride. These polymers can be incorporated in a marine paint which, when applied, would retain an anti-fouling activity through hydrolytic cleavage of the metal-oxygen-polymer bond. 

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