CHAPTER 12: Surface Engineering with Thiol‐click Chemistry

Thiol-click chemistry has emerged as a powerful approach to engineer the chemical composition of surfaces with high efficiency and modularity. This chapter provides a comprehensive review of literature examples employing thiol-based reactions to modify the surfaces of self-assembled monolayers, polymer surfaces, microporous membranes, nano- and microparticles, and biological surfaces. Although all thiol-based transformations are represented, much of the surface modification literature to date has focused on the radical-mediated thiol-ene and thiol-yne reactions and thiol-Michael reactions to fabricate surfaces with complex, but well-defined chemistries. The primary purpose of this chapter is to illustrate the clear potential and broad utility of thiol-click chemistry for surface engineering applications.