Zwitterion-bearing silica sol for enhancing antifouling performance and mechanical strength of transparent PDMS coatings
Progress in Organic Coatings(2024)
Abstract
The simultaneous improvement of mechanical strength and inhibition of slime attachment for polydimethylsiloxane(PDMS)-based fouling-release coatings remains as a great challenge. In this work, a zwitterionic precursor (N-methoxyacylethyl)-3-aminopropyltriethoxysilane (MAPS) was co-hydrolyzed with tetraethoxysilane (TEOS) to afford zwitterion-bearing silica sols (h-MAPS). The h-MAPS was then simply blended with hydroxyl-terminated PDMS (PDMS-OH, 3060 cSt and 20,000 cSt) to fabricate zwitterion-containing PDMS coatings. The pre-hydrolysis process, including hydrolysis time and TEOS content, is critical to the transparency of the coatings. High optical transparency in the range of 88.1–91.4 % at 550 nm could be reached using appropriate h-MAPS. Both PDMS-OH (3060 cSt)- and PDMS-OH (20,000 cSt)-based coatings presented excellent resistance to slime attachment in real marine environment at relatively high h-MAPS content. An improvement in anti-protein adsorption and anti-bacteria properties was achieved for the coatings based on PDMS-OH (3060 cSt) attributed to the presence of more zwitterions at its surface. Addition of h-MAPS could increase the elastic modulus and tensile strength of PDMS coatings, particularly with high efficiency for the later one. More importantly, although the tensile strength of zwitterion-containing PDMS coatings at high h-MAPS content could be up to 15 MPa, its pseudobarnacle removal strength was lower than 0.4 MPa even after seawater immersion, indicating it retained a good fouling-release performance. As a whole, zwitterion-bearing silica sols can not only provide a new approach for introduction of zwitterions into PDMS coatings, but also efficiently solve the multiple drawbacks of PDMS-based fouling-release coatings, simultaneously.
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Key words
Zwitterion,Hydroxyl-terminated PDMS,Fouling-release coatings,Antifouling coatings,Mechanical property
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