Bifunctionalized Monomers for Surfaces with Controlled Hydrophobicity

The control of surface wettability is a key parameter for many application fields (materials, biomedical engineering, etc.). In this work, a new and efficient strategy to synthesize monomers suitable for hydrophobic surface elaboration is reported. This original approach allows the preparation of monomers and, as a consequence, surfaces bearing two different substituents by using the Staudinger reductive amination and amidification. Rough conducting polymer films were prepared by electropolymerization. The original surfaces reported here are highly structured surfaces with tunable hydrophobic features. Depending on the grafted chains, the surfaces are hydrophilic (PEDOT-Benz-Ph, theta =80 degrees; PEDOT = poly(3,4-ethylenedioxythiophene)), hydrophobic (PEDOT-Benz-C-12, theta =132 degrees), or even superhydrophobic (PEDOT-Benz-F-g, theta =152 degrees (alpha=5.0 degrees, H=0.3 degrees).