Pascal Thebault

Since a long time, bacterial contamination, leading to biofilm formation, is a major problem in fields as diverse as medical, food or cosmetics even with preventive hygiene protocols. In order to eliminate or reduce bacterial colonization and biofilm formation, many strategies have emerged. Among them, one strategy is the covalent immobilization of antimicrobial compounds, e.g., antibiotics, quaternary ammonium or silver ions, to design biocidal coatings able to kill bacteria by release (or not) of the active substances. But today antimicrobial materials based on classical agents such as antibiotics, silver ions or quaternary ammoniums have restrictions due to some drawbacks such as toxicity, bacterial resistance or low efficiency. In this context, we develop since few years antimicrobial materials inspired by nature to limit emergence of multiresistant bacteria and chemical toxicity. Here we describe the elaboration of various antimicrobial materials. All these materials were characterized by appropriate techniques such Nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR) or X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy (XPS). Furthermore, their antimicrobial activity was evaluated against a range of bacteria.