Novel hydrophilic N-halamine polymer with enhanced antibacterial activity synthesized by inverse emulsion polymerization

N-halamine-based antibacterial agents have high efficiency and rechargeable antibacterial properties. However, their applications are limited due to their complex synthetic process and fuzzy antibacterial mechanism. In this study, a novel N-halamine antibacterial polymer was synthesized by inverse emulsion polymerization and characterized by Fourier transform infrared, nuclear magnetic resonance, scanning electron microscopy, thermogravimetric analysis, and X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy. Due to the difficulty of purification, most of the subjects studied previously were hydrophobic polymers, while little research on hydrophilic polymers. In this experiment, this difficulty was overcome by controlling the dosage of sodium hypochlorite and methods of dialysis. Because of the complex cell structure of Gram-negative bacteria, it is difficult for N-halamines to release the oxidizing chlorine into the cell. However, the hydrophilic N-halamines can solve this problem, which showed a stronger antibacterial effect on Gram-negative Escherichia coli synthesized in this study. In addition, the particle size and hydrophilic property of the polymer were changed by changing the amount of initiator, and the differences in their antibacterial properties were studied. © 2018 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. J. Appl. Polym. Sci. 2019 , 136, 47419.