Synthesis and Modification of Some Polymers and Screening of their Antimicrobial Activities

Abstract

Synthetic polymers have attained great importance in nearly every group of materials important to our way of life. It plays an important role in industry as raw material, in medicine such as artificial human organs, drug targeting and also in agriculture. One of these important applications is the antimicrobial polymers. Materials with

antimicrobial activity are widely used to prevent growth of the microorganisms on the surface of materials i.e. as antifouling paints or as antibiotics or in soil sterilization or in water treatment. However, these small molecules are highly toxic to environment and the protection is short lived due to the difficulty of controlling the rate of diffusion and the short life time of these materials. Attachment of antimicrobial agents to a polymer backbone by a covalent nonhydrolysable

bond can be considered as one of the great solution to overcome the problem associated with the conventional antimicrobial agents. In this study, we described synthesis and modification of polymers with antimicrobial activity. To achieve this goal, the work has gone in three directions as described in details in three chapters of this thesis as follows.