Modification of poly(tetrafluoroethylene) with polyallylamine by gamma radiation

Abstract

The major challenge for tissue engineering is the development of biomaterials that possess suitable chemical, mechanical, and topographical properties for cell culture. Functional polymers have shown promising results. This work showed a different methodology to synthesize a new functional polymer rich in primary amines on surface, using as substrate polytetrafluoroethylene (PTFE), which is a biocompatible polymer. For this purpose, PTFE was grafted with glycidyl methacrylate (GMA) by gamma radiation for its further functionalization with polyallylamine (PAA) to evaluate its hydrophilicity, roughness, thermal properties and amine content, using atomic force microscopy (AFM), contact angle and thermogravimetric analysis (TGA), respectively. The presence of amine groups onto surface was confirmed by Fourier transform infrared spectroscopy (FTIR) and quantified by X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy (XPS). Grafting yields (≈50%) of GMA onto PTFE were obtained using the pre-irradiation oxidative method at dose of 10 kGy, reaction time of 10 h, and 50 °C. Further chemical functionalization of the grafted films with PAA yielded 3.8% surface nitrogen content, a root mean square roughness (RMS) value of 465 nm, and contact angle of 57.5°. The results suggest that the developed material may have potential applications as substrate for cell adhesion.