Antimicrobial and antifouling surfaces through polydopamine bio-inspired coating

The increasing antibiotic treatment failure is attributed to the increasing emergence of drug-resistant bacteria, and the attachment of these bacteria to the surface of implantation materials often leads to dangerous bacterial biofilm formation on the implant surface. Thus, this creates an urgent need to develop new antibacterial material and antifouling implants. Polydopamine (PDA), as a mussel-inspired material, has many advantageous properties, such as a simple preparation procedure, excellent hydrophilicity and biocompatibility, strong adhesive performance, easy functionalization, outstanding photothermal conversion effect, and strong quenching effect. PDA has increasingly attracted much interest not only for its adherence to virtually all types of surfaces but also as it provides a simple and versatile approach to functionalize material surfaces to obtain a variety of multifunctional nanomaterials. In this review, we mainly focus on the preparation and polymerization mechanism of PDA systems and then provide a compilation of several reports on the PDA surface modification of various nanomaterials and material surfaces, including metals, metal oxides, carbons, and polymers. Finally, we summarize the advantages and disadvantages of polydopamine surface-modified nanomaterials. Graphical abstract