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Addressing skin abrasions on artificial turfs with zwitterionic polymer brushes

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journal contribution
posted on 2016-05-04, 13:53 authored by Sock P. Tay, Paul FlemingPaul Fleming, Steph ForresterSteph Forrester, Xiao Hu
To address the skin-friendliness of synthetic surfaces intended for sports applications, the frictional properties of hydrated zwitterionic polymer brushes are investigated outside of the common aqueous environment where an excess of lubricating water molecules is absent. Photo-grafted poly(sulfobetaine methacrylate) (pSBMA) brushes of various irradiation durations are prepared on polypropylene substrates and the improvement in frictional properties of the pSBMA-modified surfaces against a silicone skin counter-surface is studied. Frictional measurements under both dry and hydrated surface conditions shows that the applied surface modification was capable of forming a stable lubrication layer in the absence of excess water, significantly reducing the coefficient of friction by up to 78.8%. The pSBMA brushes also provide the additional advantage of antifouling – exhibiting resistance towards pathogenic Staphylococcus aureus with almost zero surface colonization for samples irradiated for 1200 s. The low skin-sample friction under ambient conditions and desirable fouling-resistance highlights the potential of pSBMA brushes as a modification strategy for achieving skin-friendly surfaces targeted at reducing the risk of skin abrasions.

Funding

The authors would like to thank the Energy Research Institute, Nanyang Technological University (ERI@N) for kindly providing access to the microtribometer and the Facility for Analysis, Characterization, Testing and Simulation (FACTS) for providing access to the FESEM imaging equipment. Special thanks to Dr Ronn Goei from the Nanyang Environment and Water Research Institute (NEWRI) for helping with the XPS analysis. This study is part of a Ph. D. program under the Institute for Sports Research (ISR), Nanyang Technological University, Singapore.

History

School

  • Architecture, Building and Civil Engineering

Published in

RSC Adv.

Volume

6

Issue

39

Pages

32446 - 32453

Citation

TAY, S.P. ... et al., 2016. Addressing skin abrasions on artificial turfs with zwitterionic polymer brushes. RSC Advances, 6 (39), pp. 32446 - 32453

Publisher

© The Royal Society of Chemistry

Version

  • AM (Accepted Manuscript)

Publisher statement

This work is made available according to the conditions of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International (CC BY-NC-ND 4.0) licence. Full details of this licence are available at: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/

Publication date

2016-03-23

Notes

This paper was accepted for publication in the journal RSC Advances and the definitive published version is available at http://dx.doi.org/10.1039/C5RA26194E.

eISSN

2046-2069

Language

  • en

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