Pulse plasma deposition of Terpinen-4-ol: an insight into polymerization mechanism and enhanced antibacterial response of developed thin films

Antifouling/antibacterial coating derived from a sustainable natural resource for biomedical devices have shown promising outcomes, especially in the prevention of bacterial growth. Herein, pulse-plasma chemical vapour deposition is used to fabricate antimicrobial coatings from Terpinen-4-ol, a tea tree oil-based precursor. In this manuscript, during RF plasma polymerisation, pulsed plasma is used to retain the pristine monomer structure in the developed stable coating and thereby enhance its antibacterial activity. The developed films have tunable physical and chemical properties. Diverse film surface properties were obtained by varying the plasma deposition parameters, mainly the deposition mode (pulse and continuous wave) and duty cycle. The role of film wettability on degree of bacterial attachment has been elucidated. Overall, the number of viable bacteria on all the deposited coatings (25-30%) were reduced to half with respect to the control (56%)