Biodegradation Control of Chitosan Materials by Surface Modification with Copolymers of Glycidyl Methacrylate and Alkyl Methacrylates

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Chitosan is a promising polymer from natural polysaccharides, which is an environmentally friendly compound from renewable raw materials. Chitosan has biodegradability, biocompatibility, and antibacterial and other activities. In this article, we report the biodegradation control of chitosan materials by use of random copolymers based on glycidyl methacrylate and (fluoro)alkyl methacrylates as surface modifiers. We show that grafting of copolymers allows increasing the hydrophobicity of chitosan materials with initial contact angles up to 114° from 89° for films and up to 154° from 123° for aerogels. We demonstrate that modified aerogels retain contact angles of more than 150° for a long contact time with water while the initial aerogel fully wets for 30 s. The resulting chitosan aerogels have high porosity with a pore size of 100–200 µm, and the pore walls are 0.6–0.7-µm-thick film formations. Our study of lyophilic properties of modified chitosan substrates showed a change in the hydrophobicity of the materials as a function of length of the hydrocarbon radical in the side groups of the (fluoro)alkyl methacrylates in the copolymers. We demonstrate that the rate of biodegradation of the resulting materials decreases with an increase in the number of hydrophobic groups in the modifier. The obtained chitosan materials with hydrophobic coatings have potential as a protective layer for wound dressings with an extended service life.