Antifouling surfaces based on polymer brushes

Biofouling is a crucial problem in the maritime industry for both military and commercial vessels. One promising approach to overcome the problem is creating a nonfouling surface with functional polymer brushes, which usually presents large exclusion volumes to inhibit protein and bacterial adhesion, or possess bactericidal functional groups. Previous studies show the increasing reports in creating an antifouling surface using polymer brushes via various techniques such as self-assembly through hydrophobic or electrostatic interactions, and covalent immobilization by means of either "grafting-to" or "grafting-from" strategy. These advances in techniques for surface modification and tailoring of polymer composition and architecture have resulted in many promising developments in the antifouling field. This chapter summarizes such recent research progress about polymer-brush-based antifouling surface, and focuses mainly on the development and application of nonfouling surfaces with anti-adhesive and/or bactericidal polymer brushes. Various types of polymer brushes (PEGylated polymers, amphiphilic copolymers, zwitterionic polymers, bioinspired polymers, bactericidal polymer, and polymers incorporating antimicrobial agents, etc.) are particularly suited for the preparation of functional bioactive surfaces, including anti-adsorption for cell and protein, antibacterial, and biomolecule-coupled and patterned surfaces.