Superior mechanical performance polyurethane-silicone coatings for synergistic antimicrobial and antifouling coatings

Abstract

With the increasing awareness of marine ecological environment, biocide-free marine antifouling coatings have been gaining increased attention in the field of marine antifouling. Among all the antifouling approaches, constructing fouling-release coatings (FRCs) may be the most effective and economical way caused by the biocide-free. However, the low mechanical strength, weak adhesion to substrates, and poor static fouling resistance of traditional silicone-based FRCs, which limiting their applications. In this work, we synthesized a polyurethane with hydroxyl terminated polydimethylsiloxane (PDMS), polytetrahydrofuran (PTMG) and isophorone diisocyanate (IPDI) as main chains, 2,2'-Bis (hydroxymethyl)butyric acid (DMBA) as chain extender, and γ-aminopropyl triethoxysilane (KH-550) as crosslinker by condensation polymerization. Meanwhile, Triclosan (TCS) was used as an antibacterial agent and mixed into the polymer system with uniformly dispersed. We introduced urethane groups into silicone, which improved the mechanical strength (ultimate tensile strength: 1.379 MPa, elongation at break: 282%). As a result, the laboratory bioassays using bacteria (E. coli, and S. aureus) showed that the anti-bacterial efficiency could respectively reach ∼95% and ∼93%, which demonstrated an outstanding antifouling property of the D:K = 0.7:1.3/1.0. This work overcomes the low strength issue of traditional fouling-release coatings and provides a simple strategy for silicone-based polyurethane antifouling coatings.