A facile and versatile strategy for synthesis of dopamine‐functionalized polymers

Abstract Mussel‐inspired biomimetic dopamine (DA)‐functionalized polymers have been widely studied and applied in many fields, such as biological adhesives, surface modification and biomedicine. However, the current preparation methods still face challenging obstacles, such as complex multistep processes, harsh reaction conditions and relatively low yield. Herein, a facile, efficient and versatile strategy was designed to synthesize DA‐functionalized polymers by epoxy‐amino click reaction between DA and epoxy‐containing polymers derived from readily available commercial monomer glycidyl methacrylate (GMA). A series of DA‐functionalized polymers were successfully prepared and their structure and composition were fully characterized. In addition, the performance for adhesion and surface modification of obtained DA‐functionalized polymers was evaluated. The results indicated this novel synthetical strategy can readily prepare DA‐functionalized polymers in a highly simple and controllable manner. Moreover, the DA‐functionalized polymers prepared by epoxy‐amino click reaction possessed an enhanced performance for adhesiveness. Considering the universality, simplicity and high controllability of this methodology as well as the readily available raw materials, this strategy provides new opportunities for scale‐up production of DA‐functionalized polymers with tunable DA content for various applications.