From neutral to zwitterionic poly(α-amino acid) nonfouling surfaces: Effects of helical conformation and anchoring orientation.

The development of high-performance nonfouling polymer surfaces for implantable medical devices and therapeutic nanomaterials is of great importance. Elaborating the relationship of polymer structural characteristics and the resulted surface properties can offer useful guidance toward ideal biointerfaces. In this work, we investigate the effects of the helical conformation and anchoring orientation of poly(α-amino acid)s (PαAAs) to produce advanced nonfouling surfaces. By using the neutral poly(γ-(2-(2-(2-methoxyethoxy)ethoxy)ethoxy)esteryl glutamates) (P(EG3Glu)s) as a model system, the adsorption kinetics are monitored by ex-situ variable angle spectroscopic ellipsometry and in-situ quartz crystal microbalance with dissipation. It is found that the polymers adopting a rigid rod-like α-helical conformation can self-assemble more rapidly to produce denser adlayers, and generate significantly improved nonfouling surfaces compared to those flexible polymer analogues including the widely used antifouling polymer PEG. Moreover, the surface properties can be further enhanced by using the antiparallel orientated helical P(EG3Glu)s. Most importantly, the insights gained from the P(EG3Glu) model system are successfully applied to the generation of ultra-low-fouling surfaces using zwitterionic PαAAs brushes, underscoring the generality of the approach. Particularly, the surface based on the antiparallel aligned zwitterionic helical PαAAs exhibits ∼98–99% reduction of human serum adsorption relative to the bare gold, and gives almost no adhesion of mouse platelet. Taken together, this work depicts an extremely simple yet highly effective approach to manipulate surface properties for numerous applications in biomaterial interfaces, diagnostics, and biosensors.