The influence of material properties on bacterial attachment to surfaces needs to be understood when applying polymer-based biomaterials. Positively charged materials can kill adhered bacteria when the charge density is sufficiently high [1] but such materials initially increase the adherence of some bacteria such as Escherichia coli [2]. On the other hand, negatively charged materials have been shown to inhibit initial bacterial adhesion [3], but this effect has only been demonstrated in relatively few biomaterial classes and needs to be evaluated using additional systems. Gradients in surface charge can impact bacterial adhesion and this was tested in our experimental setup.

Moreover, the evaluation of bacterial adhesion to biomaterials is required to assess their potential for biological applications. Here, we studied the bacterial adhesion of E. coli and Bacillus subtilis on the surfaces of acrylonitrile-based copolymer samples with different amounts of 2-methyl-2-propene-1-sulfonic acid sodium salt (NaMAS) comonomer. The content related to NaMAS based repeating units nNaMAS varied in the range from 0.9 to 1.5 mol%.

We found a reduced colonized area of E. coli for NaMAS containing copolymers in comparison to pure PAN materials, whereby the bacterial colonization was similar for copolymers with different nNaMAS amounts. A different adhesion behavior was obtained for the second tested organism B. subtilis, where the implementation of negative charges into PAN did not change the overall adhesion pattern. Furthermore, it was observed that B. subtilis adhesion was significantly increased on copolymer samples that exhibited a more irregular surface roughness.