The Effect of Topologies and Refilling Short-chain PEG on Protein Adsorption

PEGylation is the gold standard for constructing protein resistance surfaces.Herein,grafting mPEG-SH and SH-PEG-SH with varied molecular weights(Mw=5K,10K,and 20K)on a gold chip,and the subsequent lysozyme adsorptions of the PEG layers are evaluated using quartzcrystal microbalance based on dissipation(QCM-D).The lysozyme resistance depends on the features of grafting density and chain conformation,i.e.,linear and looped conformation.However,long-chain PEG(Mw≥10K)is insufficient to form a dense layer to resist protein due to large steric hindrances.Short-chain PEG(Mw=1K)with linear and looped structures is used to refill onto the long-chain PEG layer to increase the grafting density of PEGs and improve protein resistance.The refilling process and the subsequent protein adsorption depend on conformation rather than the density of the long-chain PEG substrate.Notably,the long-chain PEG looped substrates significantly improve protein resistance,attributing to the high viscoelasticity of the looped substrate and an increase in grafting density after refilling.Thus,refilling short-chain PEG improves protein resistance and the substrate conformation-dependence gives insight into the impact of topology,providing new ideas for how to increase chain density and select suitable topology to resist protein adsorption and demonstrating a potential application in biomedical fields.