Nonfouling poly(ethylene oxide) layers end-tethered to polydopamine

Citation

Pop-Georgievski, Ognen; Verreault, Dominique; Diesner, Mark-Oliver; Proks, Vladimír; Heissler, Stefan; Rypáček, František; & Koelsch, Patrick (2012). Nonfouling poly(ethylene oxide) layers end-tethered to polydopamine. Langmuir: the ACS journal of surfaces and colloids, 28(40), 14273-14283.

Abstract

Nonfouling surfaces capable of reducing protein adsorption are highly desirable in a wide range of applications. Coating of surfaces with poly(ethylene oxide) (PEO), a water-soluble, nontoxic, and nonimmunogenic polymer, is most frequently used to reduce nonspecific protein adsorption. Here we show how to prepare dense PEO brushes on virtually any substrate by tethering PEO to polydopamine (PDA)-modified surfaces. The chain lengths of hetero-bifunctional PEOs were varied in the range of 45-500 oxyethylene units (M(n) = 2000-20,000). End-tethering of PEO chains was performed through amine and thiol headgroups from reactive polymer melts to minimize excluded volume effects. Surface plasmon resonance (SPR) was applied to investigate the adsorption of model protein solutions and complex biologic medium (human blood plasma) to the densely packed PEO brushes. The level of protein adsorption of human serum albumin and fibrinogen solutions was below the detection limit of the SPR measurements for all PEO chains end-tethered to PDA, thus exceeding the protein resistance of PEO layers tethered directly on gold. It was found that the surface resistance to adsorption of lysozyme and human blood plasma increased with increasing length and brush character of the PEO chains end-tethered to PDA with a similar or better resistance in comparison to PEO layers on gold. Furthermore, the chain density, thickness, swelling, and conformation of PEO layers were determined using spectroscopic ellipsometry (SE), dynamic water contact angle (DCA) measurements, infrared reflection-absorption spectroscopy (IRRAS), and vibrational sum-frequency-generation (VSFG) spectroscopy, the latter in air and water.

Keyword(s)

Adsorption
Air
Biofouling
gold
Humans
Indoles
Muramidase
Polyethylene Glycols
Polymers
Serum Albumin
Water

Reference Type

Journal Article

Secondary Title

Langmuir: the ACS journal of surfaces and colloids

Author(s)

Pop-Georgievski, Ognen
Verreault, Dominique
Diesner, Mark-Oliver
Proks, Vladimír
Heissler, Stefan
Rypáček, František
Koelsch, Patrick

Year Published

2012

Date Published

1349740800

Volume Number

28

Issue Number

40

Pages

14273-14283

ISSN/ISBN

1520-5827

DOI

10.1021/la3029935