Surface grafting, polymer adhesion

Bhat R R, Chaney B N, Rowley J, Liebmann-Vinson A, Genzer J. Tailoring cell adhesion using surface-grafted polymer gradient assemblies. J Adv Mater 2005 17 2802-2807. 

She et al. [128] used rolling contact to estimate the adhesion hysteresis at polymer/oxide interfaces. By plasma oxidation of the cylinders of crosslinked PDMS, silica-like surfaces were generated which could hydrogen bond to PDMS r olecules. In contrast to unmodified surfaces, the adhesion hysteresis was shown to be larger and proportional to the molecular weight of grafted polymer on the substrate. The observed hysteresis was interpreted in terms of the orientation and relaxation of polymer chains known as Lake-Thomas effect. 

Transparency is often required. This is achieved by arranging that the particle size of the modifier to be below that of the wavelength of visible light (0.4-0.8 pm). This can normally be achieved by emulsion polymerisation, e.g., polybutadiene, polystyrene. Adhesion and surface compatibility between the polymer and modifier can be achieved by surface grafting of polar groups, e.g., acrylonitrile, various acrylates, onto the impact modifier surface before blending. 

A two-dimensional micropatterned tissue can be easily obtained by utihz-ing the inherent differences in cell adhesiveness between different micropatterned photografted regions. This was attained by photoiniferter graft polymerization with a projection mask placed on an iniferter-derivatized surface. Since protein adsorption and cell adhesion are markedly suppressed on nonionic graft polymers, such as polyDMAm, any anchorage-dependent cells such as endothelial cell adhere and proliferate only on nonirradiated surfaces, resulting in the formation of a two-dimensional patterned tissue or cellular sheet (Fig. 24). 

In many experiments, it appears that such drastic solvent extraction can remove the major part of the synthetic polymer, showing that the grafted polymer presents, in point of fact, a good "adhesive" bondability. However, in the case of surface modification, a heavy grafting is not necessary and the degre of permanence is a function of the insolubility of the homopolymer in the solvents used in the common course of subsequent treatments. So it can be inferred that this notion of grafting may be dependent on the efficiency of the solvent extraction. 

Gutowski, W. V. 2003. Interface/interphase engineering of polymers for adhesion enhancement Review of micromechanical aspects of polymer interface reinforcement through surface grafted molecular brushes. Journal of Adhesion 79 445-82. 

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