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Functional Surface Modification of Polymers

A special issue of Polymers (ISSN 2073-4360). This special issue belongs to the section "Polymer Processing and Engineering".

Deadline for manuscript submissions: closed (28 April 2022) | Viewed by 11525

Special Issue Editors


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Centre for Mechanical and Aerospace Science and Technologies (C-MAST-UBI), Universidade da Beira Interior, Rua Marquês d’Ávila e Bolama, 6200-001 Covilhã, Portugal
Interests: multifunctional materials; composites; sensors and actuators
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Guest Editor
BCMaterials, Basque Center for Materials, Applications and Nanostructures, UPV/EHU Science Park, 48940 Leioa, Spain
Interests: multifunctional materials; smart materials; energy storage; energy harvesting; sensors; actuators
Special Issues, Collections and Topics in MDPI journals

Special Issue Information

Dear Colleagues,

We are immersed in an era of rapidly growing and strongly relevant advances in science and technology, where scientific and innovation areas are increasingly overlapping in new and exciting ways, for the general benefict of humanity. Recent technological advances point to the development of sustainable and interconnected smart systems, strongly based on the development of smart and multifunctional materials.

Polymers offer the widest range of bulk physical and chemical properties, are versatile and easy to process, but often lack the surface properties required for specific applications. Surfaces are the limits with the external environment, where the material works and behaves, being an essential aspect for the proper functional characteristics and functional lifetime of the material. Thus, the tailoring of surface properties for different purposes, such as protective or decorative coatings, friction and wear, thin film technologies, biomaterials, sensors and actuators, medicinal devices, and membranes, among many others, is of utmost importance to transform these functional materials into highly valuable finished products.

Smart and multifunctional materials are benefitting from this understanding and control of their physico-chemical properties, leading to a suitable tailoring of processability and integration into devices, shape/morphology, and performance. In the last few decades, the functional properties and use of polymer concepts has changed in this regard, resulting in a new generation of high-performance materials that have led to greater focus on controlling production, structures, and functional responses, as well as on implementation in proof-of-concept advanced applications. The modification of the polymer surface becomes an increasingly relevant topic in the strongly growing field of smart and multifunctional materials.

Despite the intense and fruitful progress experienced by the research community in these areas, there are still relevant issues that should be addressed and discussed related to improved performance, a deeper understainding of the physicochemical characteristics of the mateirials, processability, device integration, and reliability, in order to enable real applications. It seems noticeable that open questions and challenges are constant, which also act as an inexhaustible source of ideas and applications for future research.

It is our pleasure to invite you to submit a manuscript for this Special Issue that seeks to become a landmark in the development of this interesting and fruitful research field. Review papers, full papers, and short communications are all welcome.

Dr. João Nunes-Pereira
Prof. Dr. Senentxu Lanceros-Mendez
Guest Editors

Manuscript Submission Information

Manuscripts should be submitted online at www.mdpi.com by registering and logging in to this website. Once you are registered, click here to go to the submission form. Manuscripts can be submitted until the deadline. All submissions that pass pre-check are peer-reviewed. Accepted papers will be published continuously in the journal (as soon as accepted) and will be listed together on the special issue website. Research articles, review articles as well as short communications are invited. For planned papers, a title and short abstract (about 100 words) can be sent to the Editorial Office for announcement on this website.

Submitted manuscripts should not have been published previously, nor be under consideration for publication elsewhere (except conference proceedings papers). All manuscripts are thoroughly refereed through a single-blind peer-review process. A guide for authors and other relevant information for submission of manuscripts is available on the Instructions for Authors page. Polymers is an international peer-reviewed open access semimonthly journal published by MDPI.

Please visit the Instructions for Authors page before submitting a manuscript. The Article Processing Charge (APC) for publication in this open access journal is 2700 CHF (Swiss Francs). Submitted papers should be well formatted and use good English. Authors may use MDPI's English editing service prior to publication or during author revisions.

Keywords

  • Polymer functionalization
  • Surface modification
  • Polymer composites
  • Coatings
  • Plasma treatments
  • Biopolymer functionalization
  • Smart surfaces
  • Self-healing surfaces
  • Self-sensing surfaces
  • Responsive surfaces
  • Planar device integration
  • Multilayer approaches

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Published Papers (3 papers)

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Research

19 pages, 8832 KiB  
Article
Controlled and Sequential Delivery of Stromal Derived Factor-1 α (SDF-1α) and Magnesium Ions from Bifunctional Hydrogel for Bone Regeneration
by Zhengshi Li, Huimin Lin, Shanwei Shi, Kai Su, Guangsen Zheng, Siyong Gao, Xuan Zeng, Honglong Ning, Meng Yu, Xiang Li and Guiqing Liao
Polymers 2022, 14(14), 2872; https://doi.org/10.3390/polym14142872 - 15 Jul 2022
Cited by 9 | Viewed by 2530
Abstract
Bone healing is a complex process that requires the participation of cells and bioactive factors. Stromal derived factor-1 α (SDF-1α) and magnesium ions (Mg2+) both are significant bioactive factors for cell recruitment and osteogenesis during bone regeneration. Thus, a bifunctional hydrogel [...] Read more.
Bone healing is a complex process that requires the participation of cells and bioactive factors. Stromal derived factor-1 α (SDF-1α) and magnesium ions (Mg2+) both are significant bioactive factors for cell recruitment and osteogenesis during bone regeneration. Thus, a bifunctional hydrogel containing a sequential delivery system is fabricated to improve osteogenesis. During sequential delivery of the hydrogel, SDF-1α is predominantly released at the early stage of bone mesenchymal stem cells (BMSCs) recruitment, while Mg2+ are constantly delivered at a later stage to improve osteogenic differentiation of recruited cells. In addition, due to the early release of SDF-1α, the hydrogel showed strong BMSCs recruitment and proliferation activity. Mg2+ can not only induce up-regulation of osteogenic gene expression in vitro, but also promote bone tissue and angiogenesis in vivo. Taken together, the injection of xanthan gum-polydopamine crosslinked hydrogel co-loading SDF-1α and Mg2+ (XPMS hydrogel) provides a novel strategy to repair bone defects. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Functional Surface Modification of Polymers)
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16 pages, 117933 KiB  
Article
Effect of Polymer Dissolution Temperature and Conditioning Time on the Morphological and Physicochemical Characteristics of Poly(Vinylidene Fluoride) Membranes Prepared by Non-Solvent Induced Phase Separation
by João Teixeira, Vanessa Fernandes Cardoso, Gabriela Botelho, António Miguel Morão, João Nunes-Pereira and Senentxu Lanceros-Mendez
Polymers 2021, 13(23), 4062; https://doi.org/10.3390/polym13234062 - 23 Nov 2021
Cited by 4 | Viewed by 3839
Abstract
This work reports on the production of poly(vinylidene fluoride) (PVDF) membranes by non-solvent induced phase separation (NIPS) using N,N-dimethylformamide (DMF) as solvent and water as non-solvent. The influence of the processing conditions in the morphology, surface characteristics, structure, thermal and [...] Read more.
This work reports on the production of poly(vinylidene fluoride) (PVDF) membranes by non-solvent induced phase separation (NIPS) using N,N-dimethylformamide (DMF) as solvent and water as non-solvent. The influence of the processing conditions in the morphology, surface characteristics, structure, thermal and mechanical properties were evaluated for polymer dissolution temperatures between 25 and 150 °C and conditioning time between 0 and 10 min. Finger-like pore morphology was obtained for all membranes and increasing the polymer dissolution temperature led to an increase in the average pore size (≈0.9 and 2.1 µm), porosity (≈50 to 90%) and water contact angle (up to 80°), in turn decreasing the β PVDF content (≈67 to 20%) with the degree of crystallinity remaining approximately constant (≈56%). The conditioning time did not significantly affect the polymer properties studied. Thus, the control of NIPS parameters proved to be suitable for tailoring PVDF membrane properties. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Functional Surface Modification of Polymers)
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13 pages, 3305 KiB  
Article
Enhanced Wetting and Adhesive Properties by Atmospheric Pressure Plasma Surface Treatment Methods and Investigation Processes on the Influencing Parameters on HIPS Polymer
by Miklós Berczeli and Zoltán Weltsch
Polymers 2021, 13(6), 901; https://doi.org/10.3390/polym13060901 - 15 Mar 2021
Cited by 32 | Viewed by 4020
Abstract
The development of bonding technology and coating technologies require the use of modern materials and topologies for the demanding effect and modification of their wetting properties. For the industry, a process modification process that can be integrated into a process is the atmospheric [...] Read more.
The development of bonding technology and coating technologies require the use of modern materials and topologies for the demanding effect and modification of their wetting properties. For the industry, a process modification process that can be integrated into a process is the atmospheric pressure of air operation plasma surface treatment. This can be classified and evaluated based on the wettability, which has a significant impact on the adhesive force. The aim is to improve the wetting properties and to find the relationship between plasma treatment parameters, wetting, and adhesion. High Impact PolyStyrene (HIPS) was used as an experimental material, and then the plasma treatment can be treated with various adjustable parameters. The effect of plasma parameters on surface roughness, wetting contact angle, and using Fowkes theory of the surface energy have been investigated. Seven different plasma jet treatment distances were tested, combined with 5 scan speeds. Samples with the best plasma parameters were prepared from 25 mm × 25 mm overlapping adhesive joints using acrylic/cyanoacrylate. The possibility of creating a completely hydrophilic surface was achieved, where the untreated wetting edge angle decreased from 88.2° to 0° for distilled water and from 62.7° to 0° in the case of ethylene glycol. The bonding strength of High Impact PolyStyrene was increased by plasma treatment by 297%. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Functional Surface Modification of Polymers)
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