We had earlier first demonstrated the favorable hydration and excellent "antifouling" effect of surface grafted polysarcosine peptoid brushes. Such brushes are important since they can be used to resist the fouling by adsorption of proteins and attachment of cells, which can enable a wide range of potential applications from preventing bacteria infection and opsonization of nanotherapeutics, to maintaining marine and engineering surfaces. Subsequent work showcased also the flexibility of using sequence-specific peptoids as model polymers to experimentally study the role of “zwitterionic” mixed charged systems in antifouling. Interesting, such zero net-charge polyampholytic peptoid brushes yielded very similar apparent antifouling performance as polysarcosine. We now present recent work using molecular dynamics (MD) simulations to study the molecular behavior and hydration properties zwitterionic peptoid brushes. We include in our study polysarcosine as an uncharged comparison, and show how molecular volume and hydration effects are intertwined in a zwitterionic (peptoid) polymer brush. For example, the zwitterionic design promotes an extended brush layer structure (conformation) and could actually lower the overall electrostatic potential. Some properties promoted by the balanced charges, such as chain flexibility and hydration, increase more prominently at “low” to “intermediate” grafting densities. These and other observations suggest the ability of zwitterionic peptoids to assume antifouling properties under more situations and inform the design of antifouling polymer brushes.

Antifouling peptoid brushes: From polysarcosine to zwitterionic sequences

2019 Spring National Meeting

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