Grafting to of RAFTed Responsive Polymers to Glass Substrates by Thiol-Ene and Critical Comparison to Thiol-Gold Coupling

Surface-grafted polymers have been widely applied to modulate biological interfaces and introduce additional functionality. Polymers derived from reversible addition fragmentation transfer (RAFT) polymerization have a masked thiol at the co-chain end providing an anchor point for conjugation and in particular displays high affinity for gold surfaces (both flat and particulate). In this work, we report the direct grafting of RAFTed polymers by a thiol ene click (Michael addition) onto glass substrates rather than gold, which provides a more versatile surface for subsequent array-based applications but retains the simplicity. The immobilization of two thermoresponsive polymers are studied here, poly[oligo(ethylene glycol) methyl ether methacrylate] (pOEGMA) and poly(N-isopropylacrylamide) (pNIPAM). Using a range of surface analysis techniques the grafting efficiency was compared to thiol gold and was quantitatively compared to the gold alternative using quartz crystal microbalance. It is shown that this method gives easy access to grafted polymer surfaces with pNIPAM resulting in significantly increased surface coverage compared to pOEGMA. The nonfouling (protein resistance) character of these surfaces is also demonstrated.