The coating of Nitinol (NiTi) surface by a polymer layer has become very appealing these last few years owing to its increased attractiveness in the biomedical field. While its intrinsic properties helped ensure its popularity [1,2], its worldwide implementation is still hampered by nickel inclusions, making it sensitive to pitting corrosion and lead therefore to the release of carcinogenic Ni2+ ions. Among all the recent ways to modify Nitinol surfaces, the elaboration of self-assembled monolayers (SAM) that can kick off the initiation of a polymer layer is of great interest as their high order confer a reinforcement of the metal surface corrosion resistance, and allow to bring new functionalities to the metal for post-modification purposes. In this work, we emphasis the benefits of electro-grafting [3] assisted functional monolayer self-assembly onto nitinol alloy compared to the more traditional thermally-assisted ones by the preparation of functional monolayers that could initiate the SI-ATRP of a model monomer. More particularly it will be demonstrated how electro-grafting process allow fast SAM preparation in mild conditions while preventing degradation of ATRP initiating sites. The proof of concept is validated by initiation of poly 2-(dimethylamino)ethyl methacrylate (PDMAEMA) by ATRP and the characterization of properties of the resulting materials.

Improvement of nitinol corrosion resistance by SiATRP: The key role of electrografting process

253rd National Meeting (2017)

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