The Preparation and Characterisation of a Novel Siloxane Biomaterial

It is well known that polysiloxane interacts strongly with proteins and has been shown to adsorb significant quantities of protein due to its strong hydrophobicity, which often promotes conformational and orientational changes in the adsorbed proteins so as to decrease their biocompatibility. Therefore, the control of protein adsorption to biomaterials and the preparation of suitable siloxane biomaterials become necessary and significant for the actual application. In this paper, a novel siloxane biomaterial (siloxane microspheres) was prepared by dispersion polymerization under kinetically controlled conditions. And then, the siloxane biomaterial was characterized by particle size analyser, X-ray Photoelectron Spectroscopy (XPS) and static contact angle. The siloxane microspheres were used as the matrix, and bovine serum albumin (BSA) as the template protein, the adsorption has been investigated. The study shows that the amount of protein adsorption (BSA) is higher in the prescence of siloxane monomer than than in its absence, and the effects become more evident with the increase in the contents of siloxane monomer. This indicates that its hydrophobicity of siloxane microspheres can be shepherded through the amount of siloxane monomer added.