Imparting Nonfouling Properties to Chemically Distinct Surfaces with a Single Adsorbing Polymer: A Multimodal Binding...

Surface-active polymers that display nonfouling properties and carry binding groups that can adsorb onto different substrates are highly desirable. We present a postmodification protocol of an active-ester-containing polymer that allows the creation of such a versatile platform. Poly(pentafluorophenyl acrylate) has been postmodified with a fixed grafting ratio of a nonfouling function (mPEG) and various combinations of functional groups, such as amine, silane and catechol, which can provide strong affinity to two model substrates: SiO2 and TiO2 . Adsorption, stability and resistance to nonspecific protein adsorption of the polymer films were studied. A polymer was obtained that maintained its surface functionality under a variety of harsh conditions. EG surface-density calculations show that this strategy generates a denser packing when both negatively and positively charged groups are present within the backbone, and readily allows the fabrication of a broad combinatorial matrix.