Design, Synthesis And Properties Of Copolymer Antifouling Coatings With Microphase Separation Structure

The settlement of microorganisms as marine biofouling, has enormous harm upon shipsand other sea facilities. Playing an increasingly important role in marine organisms atifouling.Antifouling coatings become a hotspot of research interests nowadays. Antifouling coatingswith microphase separation structure were developed, with the improvement of people’sconsciousness of environment protection and the deeply understanding of marine foulingorganism mechanism. It is identified that the surfaces of coatings with microphase separationstructure have function in preventing the adsorption of proteins, thus they can be used inmarine pollution prevention. The basic thinking of the research is selecting some common andcheap polymers as chain segments to design a series of copolymers. At the same time, thesurface structures of the copolymers will be predicted. After that the copolymers will besynthesized and the surface structure and properties will be studied.Firstly, a series of common, cheap and no pollution to the marine environment polymerswere chosen as chain segments, and PDMS/PS block copolymer, PMMA/PS randomcopolymer and PMMA/PEG graft copolymer were designed respectively. Meanwhile, thesurface microphase structures of the copolymers with different components were forecastedby DPD method. The predicting results of PDMS/PS copolymer coatings with10%,20%~90%PDMS contents, PMMA/PS copolymer coatings with10%,20%~90%PMMAcontents, and PMMA/PEG copolymer coatings with10%,20%~90%PEG contents showedthat, with the increase of one segment in copolymers, the structure of the coatings changedfrom particle form to island form of one phase, then to bicontinuous structure, then to islandform and particle form of the other phase.Secondly, according to the prediction for the surface structure of the copolymers coatings,reasonable chemical synthesis processes were made. And PDMS/PS copolymers with32%,41%and50%PDMS contents, PMMA/PS copolymers with19%,62%,69%and84%PMMA contents and PMMA/PEG copolymers with8%,10%and12%PEG contents weresynthesized respectively. The copolymers were characterized by FT-IR,1H-NM, UV and DSCmethod. Copolymer coatings were prepared by spin-casting method, and surface structure of the coatings were studied by tapping mode AFM. It was showed that the surface structures ofthe coatings were consistent with the predictions. Thereinto the relatively hydrophilic phasewere dispersed phase, and relatibely hydrophobic phase were continuous phase. With theincrease of dispersed phase in copolymer coatings, the phase size increased.Thirdly, wettability and antifouling performance of copolymer coatings were studied.Water contact angle experiment was used to study the surface wettability of PDMS/PS,PMMA/PS and PMMA/PEG copolymers coatings. The results showed that the wettabiltiy ofthe coatings depended on the components of copolymers. The antifouling propertiesPDMS/PS, PMMA/PS and PMMA/PEG copolymer coatings were studied by bovine serumalbumin adsorption experiment and nitzschia closterium minutissima adsorption experiment.The results showed that the antifouling properties of copolymer coatings depent not only onthe wettability but also on the surface structure.Lastly, for further study of the relationship between the structures and antifoulingperformance, antifouling mechanism was studied from adsorption content size was less thanand more than the phase separation structure points of view. The antifouling performances ofthe copolymer coating in this paper were revealed by that mechanism, furthermore, thismechanism provided theory basis for other materials with micro phase separation structure inexplaining the antifouling performance.