TY - JOUR
T1 - Polycarbonate Surface Modification via Aqueous SI-PET-RAFT
AU - Fromel, Michele
AU - Pester, Christian W.
N1 - Funding Information:
This work was supported by funding from 3M. The authors thank Dan O’Neal, Jerald Rasmussen, Richard Kollaja, Eric Nelson, Gereon Yee, Jonathan Hester, Rob Owings, Nisha Hollingsworth, Clinton Cook, Rajdeep Kalgutkar, Andrew Vail, and Sam Dalsin for fruitful discussions. The authors would like to acknowledge the Penn State Materials Characterization Laboratory for assistance with XPS experiments.
Publisher Copyright:
© 2022 American Chemical Society.
PY - 2022/6/28
Y1 - 2022/6/28
N2 - Polycarbonate (PC) is a popular consumer plastic due to its light weight, optical clarity, mechanical strength, and temperature stability. Though nontoxic and biocompatible, its inherent hydrophobicity limits its potential in applications that require hydrophilicity or use in the body. This work presents a facile method to chemically modify PC surfaces with superhydrophilic polymer brushes. A method is developed to immobilize reversible addition-fragmentation chain transfer (RAFT) agents on PC substrates. From these PC-tethered RAFT initiators, hydrophilic polymer brushes are grown under aqueous conditions, visible light, and ambient atmosphere. The resulting films decrease PC surface water contact angles (θ) to as low as θ < 10° (superhydrophilic) by continuous growth or sequential extension. This work expands the realm of possibility for uses of PC from anti-fogging lenses to durable biological devices, allowing scientists and engineers to take advantage of the many attractive physical properties of PC without limitations of hydrophobicity.
AB - Polycarbonate (PC) is a popular consumer plastic due to its light weight, optical clarity, mechanical strength, and temperature stability. Though nontoxic and biocompatible, its inherent hydrophobicity limits its potential in applications that require hydrophilicity or use in the body. This work presents a facile method to chemically modify PC surfaces with superhydrophilic polymer brushes. A method is developed to immobilize reversible addition-fragmentation chain transfer (RAFT) agents on PC substrates. From these PC-tethered RAFT initiators, hydrophilic polymer brushes are grown under aqueous conditions, visible light, and ambient atmosphere. The resulting films decrease PC surface water contact angles (θ) to as low as θ < 10° (superhydrophilic) by continuous growth or sequential extension. This work expands the realm of possibility for uses of PC from anti-fogging lenses to durable biological devices, allowing scientists and engineers to take advantage of the many attractive physical properties of PC without limitations of hydrophobicity.
UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=85133514991&partnerID=8YFLogxK
UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/citedby.url?scp=85133514991&partnerID=8YFLogxK
U2 - 10.1021/acs.macromol.2c00714
DO - 10.1021/acs.macromol.2c00714
M3 - Article
AN - SCOPUS:85133514991
SN - 0024-9297
VL - 55
SP - 4907
EP - 4915
JO - Macromolecules
JF - Macromolecules
IS - 12
ER -