Protein antifouling and fouling-release in perfluoropolyether surfaces

Perfluoropolyether polymers have been described as high performance fouling-release materials for marine coatings. Moreover, they have a good potential to be exploited in the biomedical field too. In this article several perfuoropolyether photopolymers were characterized in terms of surface and mechanical properties outlining the relationship between these properties and the polymer molecular structure. In particular the anti-fouling and fouling-release performances, evaluated using Bovine Serum Albumin as testing protein, was correlated to other material properties, like a parameter considering both surface tension components and elastic modulus E. A good correlation between the anti-fouling/fouling-release of perfluoropolyethers and (E*polar)1/2 canactually be established. Our results show that perfluoropolyether photopolymers are good protein anti-fouling/fouling-release materials.