Baek Sungchul, Green Rylie, Granville Anthony, Martens Penny, Poole-Warren Laura
Graduate School of Biomedical Engineering, University of New South Wales, Sydney, NSW 2052, Australia.
J Mater Chem B. 2013 Aug 21;1(31):3803-3810. doi: 10.1039/c3tb20152j. Epub 2013 May 17.
Hybrids of conducting polymers (CPs) and hydrogels have been explored as soft electroactive coatings for improving the mechanical and electrical performance of metallic implant electrodes. However, hydrogel fabrication methods pose a significant challenge to producing thin (sub-micron) coatings, resulting in bulky implants, which displace a large volume of tissue. To address this issue, polymer brushes of poly(2-hydroxyethyl methacrylate) (pHEMA) were covalently bound to a gold electrode using surface initiated atom-transfer radical-polymerization (SI-ATRP). The CP poly(3,4-ethylene dioxythiophene) (PEDOT) was electropolymersied through the brush layer to form a thin hydrophilic coating. The electrical properties of the hybrid were shown to be superior to homogenous CPs and the surface chemistry was varied as a function of PEDOT deposition time to present a graded composition of pHEMA and PEDOT. The resulting material was shown to support the attachment and differentiation of model neural cells, signifying the potential of these hybrid coatings for bioelectrode applications.
导电聚合物（CPs）与水凝胶的杂化材料已被探索用作柔软的电活性涂层，以改善金属植入电极的机械和电学性能。然而，水凝胶制造方法对制备薄（亚微米）涂层构成了重大挑战，导致植入物体积庞大，会占据大量组织空间。为解决这一问题，使用表面引发原子转移自由基聚合（SI-ATRP）将聚甲基丙烯酸2-羟乙酯（pHEMA）的聚合物刷共价连接到金电极上。通过刷层将CP聚（3,4-乙撑二氧噻吩）（PEDOT）进行电聚合，形成薄的亲水性涂层。结果表明，这种杂化材料的电学性能优于均质CPs，并且表面化学性质会随着PEDOT沉积时间而变化，呈现出pHEMA和PEDOT的梯度组成。结果显示，所得材料能够支持模型神经细胞的附着和分化，这表明这些杂化涂层在生物电极应用方面具有潜力。
