Effects on Impact and Tensile Behavior of Transparent Polymer Materials by the Addition of Anti-Biofouling Agents

This paper reports the effects on both the impact and tensile behavior, impact resistance, modulus, strain at break, and peak load for a series of polymers with anti-biofouling agents added. The materials include PMMA, bisphenol-A polycarbonate, and a co-polyterephthalate derived from 2,2,4,4-tetramethyl-1,3-cyclobutanediol and 1,3-propanediol (CBDO). The anti-biofouling agents studied were the algaecides Irgarol 1051 and Diuron. The anti-biofouling agents were not simply used as a coating but were compounded into pelletized material and then compression molded into test plaques. The results show that PMMA is the only polymeric material studied that does not show a decrease in impact resistance with an increasing quantity of the anti-biofouling agent. With respect to modulus, strain at break, and peak load, both PMMA and CBDO showed little dependence on the amount or type of anti-biofouling additive.