Cathodic electrografting of acrylics: From fundamentals to functional coatings

Promoting permanent adhesion between so dissimilar materials as polymers and metals is a very challenging target and a severe brake to the implementation of many potential applications. However, synthetic polymers can now be chemisorbed onto a variety of conducting surfaces by cathodic electrografting of acrylic monomers. The first part of this review will focus on the fundamental aspects of this emerging technology, thus from the historical discovery to experimental and theoretical developments, with the purpose to better comprehend the electrografting phenomenon. Once firmly established, this concept has been exploited in order to make polymeric coatings with specific functionality chemisorbed onto more diversified substrates in more convenient liquid media. This remarkable progress that largely relies on advanced controlled polymerization processes will be the topic of the second part of the review, with a special emphasis on the more recent development of smart coatings, particularly stimuli responsive coatings very well-suited to nanotechnologies. (C) 2009 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.