Photoactivated surface grafting from PVDF surfaces

Economic and easy methods to tune surface properties of polymers as Poly(vinylidene fluoride) (PVDF) without altering bulk properties are of major interest for different applications as biotechnological devices, medical implant device… UV irradiation appears as one of the simplest, easy and safe method to modify surface properties. In the case of self-initiated grafting, it is generally assumed that the pre-treatment of the PVDF surface with UV irradiation can yield alkyl and per-oxy radicals originating from breaking bonds and capable of initiating the subsequent surface grafting polymerizations. Surprisingly, the present work shows that it is possible to obtain polymer grafting using low energetic UV-A irradiation (3.1-3.9 eV) without breaking PVDF bonds. An EPR study has been performed in order to investigate the nature of involved species. The ability of the activated PVDF surface to graft different kinds of hydrophilic monomers using the initiated surface polymerization method has been tested and discussed on the basis of ATR FT-IR, XPS and NMR HRMAS results.