PNIPAM grafted surfaces through ATRP and RAFT polymerization: Chemistry and bioadhesion

Abstract

Biomaterials surface design is critical for the control of materials and biological system interactions.Being regulated by a layer of molecular dimensions, bioadhesion could be effectively tailored by polymersurface grafting. Basically, this surface modification can be controlled by radical polymerization, whichis a useful tool for this purpose. The aim of this review is to provide a comprehensive overview of therole of surface characteristics on bioadhesion properties. We place a particular focus on biomaterialsfunctionalized with a brush surface, on presentation of grafting techniques for “grafting to” and “graft-ing from” strategies and on brush characterization methods. Since atom transfer radical polymerization(ATRP) and reversible addition-fragmentation chain transfer (RAFT) polymerization are the most fre-quently used grafting techniques, their main characteristics will be explained. Through the example ofpoly(N-isopropylacrylamide) (PNIPAM) which is a widely used polymer allowing tuneable cell adhesion,smart surfaces involving PNIPAM will be presented with their main modern applications.