To fight against infectious diseases, the design of antimicrobial materials and surfaces is gaining momentum. Beside the current COVID-19 pandemic and its direct consequences on other infectious diseases, the World Health Organization (WHO) is worried about another major health disaster that could arise because of the difficulties to fight against infections due to multidrug-resistant (MDR) bacteria and fungi. In this context, efficient antimicrobial materials and surfaces could play a key role to prevent the spread of such pathogens.

The objective of this thesis project is to develop antibacterial surfaces based on polyionene, a type of polymers that trap pathogens. These grafted surfaces developed at IRAMIS (3 patents) have been characterized by physico-chemical and biological studies. We have shown their effectiveness both as a bacterial trap (pro-adhesive effect) and antibacterial. The "bacterial trap" effect could be advantageously exploited to clean contaminated surfaces or to probe places that are difficult to access. This project will bring together chemists of IRAMIS (DRF) and in microbiologists of JOLIOT (DRF) to identify the best formulations of polymers and graftings, and to document the antibacterial effects on pathogenic agents (spores of Bacillus, vegetative forms of Gram + and Gram - bacteria).