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.

Graphical Abstract

Keywords:

• Polydimethylsiloxane (PDMS)
• polyurethane
• marine antifouling
• low surface energy
• antifouling coatings

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported financially by the New Colleges and Universities Twenty Foundational Projects of Jinan City (grant No. 2021GXRC068), the basic research projects of science, education, and industry integration pilot engineering of Qilu University of Technology (Shandong Academy of Sciences) (grant No. 2023PY002), the talent research projects of Qilu University of Technology (Shandong Academy of Sciences) (grant No. 2023RCKY013), the Natural Science Foundation of Shandong Province (grant No. ZR2022MB143), the 2023 graduate education and teaching reform projects of Qilu University of Technology (Shandong Academy of Sciences) (grant No. 24231601010415), the major innovation projects for integrating science, education & industry of Qilu University of Technology (Shandong Academy of Sciences) (grant No. 2022JBZ01-07).