Functional water‐soluble polymers: polymer–metal ion removal and biocide properties

Abstract

Water‐soluble polymers have attracted much interest due to their potential applications in environmental protection engineering to remove harmful pollutants and in biomedicine in the areas of tissue engineering, within‐body implants or other medical devices, artificial organ prostheses, ophthalmology, dentistry, bone repair, and so on. In this review, particular emphasis is given to the ability of water‐soluble polymers with amine, amide, carboxylic acid, hydroxyl and sulfonic acid functional groups to remove metal ions by means of the liquid‐phase polymer‐based retention (LPR) technique that combines the use of water‐soluble polymers and ultrafiltration membranes. The second part is dedicated to showing the potential application of functional water‐soluble polymers and their polymer–metal complexes as biocides for various bacteria. These polymers and polymer–metal complexes show an efficient bactericide activity, especially to Gram‐negative bacteria, Staphylococcus aureus reaching concentrations lower than 4 µg mL−1. This activity depends on polymer size, type of metal ion, contact time and concentration of polymer and metal ion. The discussion reveals that in the case of the LPR process the efficiency of metal ion removal depends strongly on the type of polymer functional group and the feed pH value. In general, two mechanisms of ion entrapment are suggested: complex formation and electrostatic interaction. In the case of the medical use of water‐soluble polymers and their complexes with metal ions, the review documents the unique bactericide properties of the investigated species. The polymer‐metal ion complexes show a reduced genotoxic activity compared with free metal ions. Copyright © 2009 Society of Chemical Industry

Macromolecular peroxo complexes of Vanadium(V) and Molybdenum(VI): Catalytic activities and biochemical relevance

“…75 The use of water soluble polymer-metal adducts opened new strategies in the development of pharmaceutical formulations and other biological applications. 83 Binding of active drug molecules to water-soluble polymeric drug carriers offer various advantages including improved drug pharmacokinetics, lower toxicity to healthy organs, possible facilitation of preferential uptake by targeted cells and programmed drug release profile. 84,85 A remarkable improvement has been achieved in case of platinum based anti-cancer drugs by anchoring it to soluble polymers.…”

Cooperative adsorption of critical metal ions using archaeal poly-γ-glutamate

“…, Ni 2? 3), suggesting that their complexes to trivalent cations could be readily separated from aqueous solutions without using ultra-and nanofiltration procedures (Rivas et al 2009). (Fig.…”

“…Although PAC is generally considered to be a good chelating polymer, the pK a value of its carboxyl groups was calculated to be * 4.8 (Rivas et al 2009), implying incomplete functionalization during the adsorption of some critical metal ions, such as In 3? Although PAC is generally considered to be a good chelating polymer, the pK a value of its carboxyl groups was calculated to be * 4.8 (Rivas et al 2009), implying incomplete functionalization during the adsorption of some critical metal ions, such as In 3?…”

Imprinted polymers for the removal of heavy metal ions from water

“…Recently, though, soluble polymers have been used in an ultrañltration set-up, also called liquid-phase polymer-based retention technique (Rivas et al 2003;Pizarro et al 2007;Schulte & Schuster 2008;Rivas et al 2009). These techniques can remove a variety of heavy metal and metalloid ions, but they still require specialized polymer syntheses.…”