Grafting of Porous Conductive Fiber Mats with an Antifouling Polymer Brush by Means of Filtration‐Based Surface Initiated ATRP

Abstract

This work addresses the challenge of surface modification of porous, electrospun fiber mats containing an insoluble conducting polymer coating. Herein, a novel methodology of grafting a polymer brush onto conducting polymer fiber mats is developed that employs filtering of the polymerization solution through the fiber mat. An electrospun sulfonated polystyrene‐poly(ethylene‐ran‐butylene)‐polystyrene (sSEBS) fiber mat is first coated with a layer of conducting copolymer bearing an Atom Transfer Radical Polymerization (ATRP) initiating functionality (PEDOT‐Br). The surface‐initiated ATRP from the fibers’ surface is then carried out to graft a hydrophilic polymer brush (poly(ethylene glycol) methyl ether methacrylate) by means of filtering the polymerization solution through the fiber mat. Scanning electron microscopy (SEM) images reveal a progressive change in the morphology of the fiber mat surface with the increasing volume of the filtrated polymerization solution, while energy dispersive X‐ray spectrosdcopy (EDX) spectra show a change in the atomic oxygen to sulfur (O/S) ratio, therefore confirming the successful grafting from the fibers’ surface. The conductive fiber mat grafted with hydrophilic brushes shows a 20% reduction in the non‐specific adsorption of bovine serum albumin (BSA) compared to a pristine fiber mat. This study is a proof‐of‐concept for this novel, filtration‐based, surface‐initiated polymerization methodology.