Plasma Assisted Fluorination of Polyether Ether Ketone for Stable Antimicrobial Performance

Abstract

Polyether ether ketone (PEEK) has been extensively used in healthcare due to its excellent mechanical properties, chemical resistance and biocompatibility, but its weak bactericidal performance results in pathogenic bacteria being highly susceptible to adhering and proliferating on the PEEK surface, which leads to various nosocomial infections through contact. In this work, physical plasma treatment and chemical fluoridation have been combined to enable PEEK surface with stable antibacterial performance. The characteristics of surface morphology, elemental composition and hydrophilicity for the samples have been characterized to confirm the successful introduction of nanoprotruding structures and fluorine on the PEEK surface. In vitro experiments reveal that the obtained PEEK surface exhibited great antimicrobial rates of 91.00 ± 0.30%, 87.40 ± 0.66%, and 90.07 ± 0.35% against gram-negative Escherichia coli, gram-positive Staphylococcus aureus, and gram-negative Acinetobacter baumannii, respectively. Furthermore, the antimicrobial effect of the modified PEEK surface has remained almost unchanged after 28 days of storage at room temperature, and it still has showed almost no variation after 4 h at 121oC, confirming its excellent storage property and high-temperature stability. This study presents an efficient and practical method to enhance the antimicrobial properties of the PEEK surface.

Keywords: Polyether ether ketone, plasma, fluorination, antibacterial performance, stability