Currently, polyethylene terephthalate (PET) is one of the most widely used polymeric materials in different sectors such as medicine, engineering, and food, among others, due to its benefits, including biocompatibility, mechanical resistance, and tolerance to chemicals and/or abrasion. However, despite all these excellent characteristics, it is not capable of preventing the proliferation of microorganisms on its surface. Therefore, providing this property to PET remains a difficult challenge. Fortunately, different strategies can be applied to remove microorganisms from the PET surface. In this work, the surface of the PET film was functionalized with amino groups and later with a dicarboxylic acid, allowing a grafting reaction with chitosan chains. Finally, the chitosan coating was loaded with silver nanoparticles with an average size of 130 ± 37 nm, presenting these materials with an average cell viability of 80%. The characterization of these new PET-based materials showed considerable changes in surface morphology as well as increased surface hydrophilicity without significantly affecting their mechanical properties. In general, the implemented method can open an alternative pathway to design new PET-based materials due to its good cell viability with possible bacteriostatic activity due to the biocidal properties of silver nanoparticles and chitosan.
Keywords: chitosan; coating; graft; nanoparticles; polyethylene terephthalate; silver.