Surface modification of polydivinylbenzene microspheres with a fluorinated glycopolymer using thiol-halogen click chemistry

Abstract

Distillation-precipitation polymerization of divinylbenzene was applied to obtain uniform-sized polymeric microspheres. The microspheres were then modified with polypentafluorostyrene chains utilizing surface-initiated atom transfer radical polymerization techniques. The hydrophobic fluoropolymer-coated micro-sphere was then converted to a hydrophilic biopolymer by performing thiol-halogen click chemistry between polypentafluorostyrene and 1-thio-β-D-glucose sodium salt. The semi-fluorinated glycopolymer showed good binding ability with Concanavalin A as determined by confocal microscopy and turbidity experiments.