Designer, reactive polydopamine primers for surface engineering
Roland Milatz is a PhD student in the Department Materials Science and Technology of Polymers. (Co)Promotors are prof.dr. G.J. Vancso and dr.ir. J. Duvigneau from the Faculty of Science & Technology.
Polymers have been engineered to provide exact properties in the bulk for many different applications. The surface properties, however, tend to lack behind, requiring costly and complicated procedures to bring them up to par. In nature, there exists a group of creatures that can adhere themselves to many substrates independent of material composition in challenging environments. Catechol and amine chemistry lie at the basis of the adhesion of these marine organisms. These adhesion capabilities have been applied in a biomimetic system called polydopamine (PDA). PDAs and PDA‑based materials have been developed and applied on many different surfaces ranging from stainless steel and titanium to polyethylene (PE) other polyolefins, and even poly(tetrafluoroethylene). This makes PDAs excellent candidates for developing a universal primer for surface functionalization. In this thesis, a PDA-based polymer macro-initiator is developed for grafting from a surface using surface polymerization or grafting to a surface using click chemistry. These ingredients have provided a platform through which a variety of substrates, from silicon wafers to PTFE, have been successfully functionalized. These functionalizations include antifouling or photonically engineering, creating a toolbox that can provide many different properties to many unlike surfaces.
