Polymer Brush Made from Ionic Liquid and Its Anti-Biofilm Formation Behaviors By Environmental Biota in a Flow-Type Laboratory Biofilm Reactor

Abstract

Biofilms are formed on materials surfaces by bacterial activities, which leads to the many kinds of contaminations and causes many industrial problems such as scale inside cooling water pipes, corrosion, hygiene issues at kitchens, dining, toilets, bath tubs, chronic diseases in medical fronts etc. To solve the industrial problems, many countermeasures have been proposed so far. The approach from the viewpoint of materials is one of the good ways to solve the biofilm problems. In this research, we investigated how biofilm behaviors formed in a flow type laboratory biofilm reactor (Fig.1) were affected by polymer brush coating of ionic liquids. As polymer brush, N-diethyl-N-(2-methacryloylethyl)-N-methylammonium bis(trifluoromethylsulfonyl) imide (ρDEMM-TFSI) was used with PMMA polymer brush coating as control. The polymer brush coated glass specimens were immersed in the laboratory biofilm reactor where environmental bacteria were mixed into water to form biofilms in the reactor. The specimens with biofilms were evaluated by Raman spectroscopy and optical microscopic observations. And the results were compared with those for PMMA polymer brush specimens. The results were also compared with those obtained by static immersion tests. As well as the results by static methods, ρDEMM-TFSI polymer coating specimens were sensitive to biofilm formation, being compared with the results for PMMA polymer brush coating specimens. The reason could be attributed to the ionic (anionic )polarization of ρDEMM-TFSI coating’s surfaces. However, those biofilms seemed to be concentrated at the vicinity of surfaces. Therefore, the biofilms restricted to the surface area might be removed easily. Figure 1