Oxygen Tolerant and Cytocompatible Iron(0)-Mediated ATRP Enables the Controlled Growth of Polymer Brushes from Mammalian Cell Cultures
Amine Layadi, Benjamin Kessel, Wenqing Yan, Matteo Romio, Nicholas D. Spencer, Marcy Zenobi‐Wong, Krzysztof Matyjaszewski, Edmondo M. Benetti
Abstract
The use of zerovalent iron (Fe0)-coated plates, which act both as a source of catalyst and as a reducing agent during surface-initiated atom transfer radical polymerization (SI-ATRP), enables the controlled growth of a wide range of polymer brushes under ambient conditions utilizing either organic or aqueous reaction media. Thanks to its cytocompatibility, Fe0 SI-ATRP can be applied within cell cultures, providing a tool that can broadly and dynamically modify the substrate’s affinity toward cells, without influencing their viability. Upon systematically assessing the application of Fe-based catalytic systems in the controlled grafting of polymers, Fe0 SI-ATRP emerges as an extremely versatile technique that could be applied to tune the physicochemical properties of a cell’s microenvironments on biomaterials or within tissue engineering constructs.