Polymer brushes are of great interest as medical device coatings that have the potential for preventing bacterial infection and blood clots.  Chitosan, CH, and chitosan with quaternary ammonium salts, CH-Q, were immobilized on polyurethane, PU, tubes via polyacrylic acid, PAA, as intermediate adhesive layer, which was grafted onto the PU tubes using surface initiated radical polymerization, SIRP, and the grafted layers were characterized using fluorescent microscopy.  The normalized fluorescent intensities of rhodamine red labeled CH and CH-Q grafted tubes were 1763 � 120 and 3029 � 394, respectively.  The CH grafted tube had higher fluorescent intensity than CH-Q grafted tube because the grafted CH layer has more primary amine functional groups, which react with succinimidyl easter of rhodamine red label.  Material wear tests showed that CH and CH-Q are stably grafted onto PU tubes.  This study also demonstrates that fluorescent microscopy is a useful characterization method for polymer tube coatings.

Chitosan grafted polyurethane tubes using poly(acrylic acid) as an adhesive layer

244th National Meeting (2012)

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