Applied Surface Science

Volume 641, 30 December 2023, 158532
Applied Surface Science

Full Length Article
Transparent amphiphilic silicone-based fouling-release coatings: Analyzing the effect on coating-fouling interfacial behavior

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.apsusc.2023.158532Get rights and content

Highlights

  • •
    The transparent and amphiphilic silicone-based coatings are prepared conveniently.
  • •
    Significantly lower protein adhesion force and reduced protein attachment are obtained.
  • •
    Excellent fouling release performance is reached.
  • •
    Significant differences in the expression of adhesion proteins in mussel adhesive plaque are verified.
  • •
    The main reason is that the introduction of amphiphilic materials significantly reduces the adhesion strength at the coating-fouling interface.

Abstract

The amphiphilic antifouling coatings are effective for inhibiting fouling adhesion. Herein, the amphiphilic coatings were prepared by introducing polyether-modified polydimethylsiloxane (PE-PDMS). Uniform morphology, high transmittance, low surface roughness and amphiphilic property were obtained. PE-PDMS appearing as interspersed chains endowed the coating with amphiphilic characteristic. The artificial seawater promoted the migration of polyether to the surface. The protein adhesion force and quality were significantly reduced according to AFM-based colloidal probe technique and Quartz Crystal Microbalance with Dissipation, respectively. The coating exhibited antibacterial activity against Pseudoalteromonas xiamenensis (84.0%), Escherichia coli (69.2%) and Staphylococcus aureus (63.0%), respectively. 63.1% Halamphora. sp and 75.8% Nitzschia closterium f. had been inhibited, while the coatings possessed outstanding fouling release property with above 76.1% diatom detached after water exposure, proving that the amphiphilic parts weakened the adhesion of fouling. The mussel settlement assay confirmed that less adhesive plaques existed over the amphiphilic coatings. In addition, the expression for mussel adhesion proteins (mfp-5 and mfp-6) were significantly increased, demonstrating that amphiphilic polymers interfered with the adhesion response of the mussels. The effect on the interfacial behavior between fouling and coating is explored, providing a meaningful issue for the development of environmentally friendly antifouling coatings.

Introduction

The marine biofouling has gained broad attention due to a severe effect on maritime industries, such as marine vessels, underwater facility and constructions [1], [2]. In especial, the adhered biofouling over ship hull causes surface deterioration, damages propellers, increases drag, and enhances the excessive fuel usage and maintenance expense [3]. Economic losses due to biofouling directly limit the development of the marine economy [4]. Meanwhile, with the detection and development for ocean resources, oceanographic optical instrumentation and sensors suffer aggravated biofouling issues, which leads to equipment failure and inaccurate data [5], [6], [7]. In the last decades, antifouling coatings with toxic metals and organic materials within formula were considered as a facile strategy [8]. However, owing to the negative impacts of high toxicity to a variety of marine creature and accumulation through the biological chain by the toxic coating, these coatings have been phased out worldwide [9], [10]. Developing biocide-free antifouling systems is favorable for marine ecology.
To date, depended on the current state of research on antifouling coatings, fouling-resistant coatings and fouling-release coatings are interesting and efficient, which are represented by hydrophilic polymer (polyethylene glycol, zwitterionic materials) and low surface energy coatings (fluorinated polymer, polydimethylsiloxane), respectively [11], [12], [13], [14]. Nevertheless, fouling-resistant coatings tend to swelling or salt accumulation, which leads to lose efficacy in long run [15], [16]. Different from hydrated layer by hydrophilic materials to keep resistance to biofouling, the low surface energy coatings suppress the adhesion for biofouling, meanwhile appropriate surface free energy (20 ∼ 30 mJ·m-2) results in weak cohering between coating and biofouling, therefore adhering biofouling is easily stripped off by mechanical cleaning or by shear forces during navigation [17], [18], even so certain fouling could form a strong adhesion on the above coatings.
In practical applications, a single anti-fouling strategy cannot meet the complex and variable marine environment. Recently, amphiphilic surface has been intriguing and conceived as one of more advantageous strategy in terms of marine anti-biofouling [19], [20]. The heterogeneous nanoscale mosaic chemical structure containing hydrophobic and hydrophilic domains could puzzle the creatures during touching and sticking, which possesses potential for application [21]. Further, the effect of amphiphilic materials on the surface properties of the coatings and the interfacial activity needs to be further investigated and examined.
To resolve the effect of the introduction of amphiphilic materials on the coating properties and interfacial characteristics, the influence of antifouling materials needs to be minimized, therefore low surface energy antifouling coatings prepared by the sol-gel method meet the above requirements [22]. In this work, a facile and cost-effective one-step sol-gel strategy was designed with n-octyltriethoxysilane (C8-TEOS), tetraethoxysilane (TEOS) and polyether modified polydimethylsiloxane (PE-PDMS). The resultant coatings possessed high optical transparency, low surface roughness and amphiphilic properties. The migration of PE-PDMS to the coating surface in artificial seawater (ASW) was verified by Atomic Force Microscope (AFM) and X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy (XPS). Significantly lower protein adsorption and adhesion force on prepared amphiphilic coatings were proved by Quartz Crystal Microbalance with Dissipation (QCM-D) and AFM-based colloidal probe technique, respectively. Fouling-resistance and fouling-release performance was demonstrated by bacterial and diatom settlement assays. The effect of amphiphilic substances on the surface properties of coatings was discussed, while the influence of amphiphilic materials on mussel attachment was validated by differential expression of mussel adhesion proteins in adhesive plaques. This study provides theoretical references for the design of marine antifouling coatings.

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Section snippets

Materials

TEOS, C8-TEOS, and isopropanol (IPA) were purchased from Fuchen (Tianjin) Chemical Reagent Co., Ltd, Shanghai Macklin Biochemical Co., Ltd, and Tianjin Fuyu Fine Chemical Co., Ltd, respectively. PE-PDMS (brand type BYK-331) was purchased from Germany BYK-CHEMIE Corporation. Escherichia coli (E. coli), and Staphylococcus aureus (S. aureus) were purchased from Shanghai Preservation Biotechnology Center. Pseudoalteromonas xiamenensis (P. xiamenensi, MCCC 1A06494) were purchased from the Third

Transparency, surface topography and hydrophilicity

To demonstrate the successful preparation of silicone-based materials, FT-IR spectra of the samples were investigated (as illustrated in Figure S1). The overall FT-IR spectra of T-C8-PPx samples showed no obvious difference, which were dominated by the Si-O-Si between 1120 and 1072 cm−1, indicating that the major construction was generated via hydrolysis and condensation reactions [25], [26], [27]. It proved that the introduction of amphiphilic polymer had no effect on the preparation of the

Conclusion

We had developed a transparent and amphiphilic silicone-based film with the incorporation of PE-PDMS. The amphiphilic property had been verified by H2O and CH2I2 contact angle tests. The emerging raised morphology and C-O bond was because of the incorporation of PE-PDMS. Hydrophilicity was provided by polyether block, while the octyl group and polydimethylsiloxane offered the hydrophobicity. After soaking in ASW, the migration of polyether block to the surface had been realized by XPS and AFM

CRediT authorship contribution statement

Jianwei Zhang: Conceptualization, Methodology, Investigation, Software, Writing – original draft. Xuefeng Bai: Supervision. Rongrong Chen: Supervision, Writing – review & editing, Funding acquisition. Jing Yu: Writing – review & editing. Gaohui Sun: Resources. Qi Liu: Data curation, Resources. Jingyuan Liu: Data curation, Resources. Jiahui Zhu: Resources. Shifeng Guo: Resources, Funding acquisition, Methodology. Jun Wang: Supervision, Investigation, Methodology.

Declaration of Competing Interest

The authors declare that they have no known competing financial interests or personal relationships that could have appeared to influence the work reported in this paper.

Acknowledgments

This work was supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China (Grant 52071332), the Fundamental Research Funds for Central Universities, the Science and Technology Innovation Commission of Shenzhen (Grant JCYJ20180507182239617) and Heilongjiang Touyan InnovationTeam Program.

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