Dual-functional anti-biofouling coatings with intrinsic self-healing ability

The colonization of microbe on the material surface causes serious damage to the fields of biomedicine, water purification, and biosensors, and therefore versatile and biocompatible anti-biofouling coatings are highly demanded. Here, we fabricated a dual-functional (fouling-resist and antibacterial properties) anti-biofouling self-healing coating (DASC) with the triplex-crosslinked network (the covalent bonds, hydrogen bonds, and ionic interactions), which could be coated on 316L stainless steel substrate and demonstrated strong adhesive strength. The DASC-15 (the quaternary ammonium compounds accounts for 15 mol%) could inhibit the adhesion of biofouling due to its hydroxyethyl acrylate (HEA) and poly(ethylene glycol) methyl ether acrylate (PEGA 480 ) units, and its anti-protein adhesion efficiency reached 90%. The presence of the quaternary ammonium compounds cations endowed the DASC-15 with excellent broad-spectrum antibacterial property, and the killing efficiency against Staphylococcus aureus and Escherichia coli was approximately 99.9%. Moreover, The DASC-15 could be repaired within 15 min under ambient condition after being scratched. The mechanical property restored to 93% of its original condition, which was derived from the destruction and recombination of the supramolecular non-covalent bonds. More prominently, larger scratches with the width of 200 μm could be repaired and the anti-biofouling property remained at the humidity of 90%. The coating is promising for biomaterial due to its strong metal adhesion, good biocompatibility, excellent anti-biofouling and outstanding self-healing properties.