Polymer Coatings

Covalon coating technology allows for application of therapeutics of varied molecular structure, and silver antimicrobials, directly to the surface of devices for site-specific delivery. The surface coatings are customized to our customers' specifications and needs. Devices include Foley catheters, central venous lines, wound drains, endotracheal tubes, and others.

Our coatings offer robust and long-lived covalent attachment to inner and outer surfaces of polymeric medical devices, with versatile surface characteristics formulated to the customer's specifications, such as:

• lubricious and hydrophilic, slippery when wet, with a low coefficient of static friction
• allows therapeutic loading and controllable therapeutic release kinetics
• inner and outer lumen coating that does not significantly alter the diameter of the device
• biocompatible, formulated with various polymer blends
• applicable to many medical devices; does not alter current medical use and improves functionality

Covalon offers a dip-coating process using ultraviolet light to induce the "growth" of polymers on medical device surfaces.  The low-energy, surface  modification process can be applied to a variety of polymers including, but not limited to, silicone, polyurethane, polyvinyl chlorides and others. When activated by ultraviolet light our initiator reagents yield highly reactive intermediate molecules that remove a hydrogen atom from the polymer surface.  The reactive polymer surface now allows monomers in solution to form carbon-carbon or carbon-nitrogen bonds with the polymer device surface by a chain reaction mechanism that also causes the monomers in solution to from a covalent polymer coating. The high reactivity of the initiator intermediates make covalent coating attachment adaptable to many polymer medical devices. The initiator molecules do not become part of the coating and are washed away from the medical device. Therapeutics are introduced in a dip-coating process, post-polymer matrix formation. 

Covalent attachment of the hydrophilic polymer coating molecules is the preferred method of surface modification for polymeric medical devices.  The coating is readily applied to polymer materials of varying geometries; tubular devices are easily coated on the interior as well as on the exterior surfaces. Films and sheets of materials can also be coated.