Framework effect of amphiphilic polyesters on their molecular movement and protein adsorption-resistance properties

• Various architectures of sulfobetaine-conjugated polyesters were successfully synthesized via ROP and ATRP methods.
• The effect of architecture of the polyester on the movement of molecular chains was studied.
• Surface properties influenced on protein adsorption were investigated.

Surface chemical characteristics of biomedical polymers, which are determined by the migration and rearrangement of polymeric chains, play an important role in the protein adsorption. In this work, the relationship between the architectures of amphiphilic polyesters and their protein adsorption resistance was investigated. Three poly (ɛ-caprolactone)s containing sulfobetaines (PCL-b-PDEAS) segments with linear, four arms and six arms star-shaped architectures were synthesized with the combination of ring-opening polymerization (ROP) and atom transfer radical polymerization (ATRP). The structures of the amphiphiles were confirmed by 1H NMR and FTIR. Water contact angles (WCA) and X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy (XPS) were used to study the surface properties of the amphiphilic copolymer films. The water contact angles were decreased due to the surface migration of hydrophilic segments. Transmission electron microscopy (TEM) displayed the occurrence of microphase separation phenomena for PCL-b-PDEAS above glass transition temperature (Tg). The results showed that the hydrophilic segments in the copolymers would migrate to the surface of the films, which resulted in the surface more hydrophilic to resist protein adsorption. The adsorption of both fibrinogen (Fg) and bovine serum albumin (BSA) were studied. The results showed that protein adsorption was depended on not only the hydrophilic chain migration but also the shape of proteins.

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