Polydopamine (PDA) is a simple and versatile conformal coating material that has been proposed for a variety of uses; however in practice its performance is often hindered by poor mechanical properties and high roughness. Here, we show that blue-diode laser annealing dramatically improves mechanical performance and reduces roughness of PDA coatings. Laser-annealed PDA (LAPDA) was shown to be >100-fold more scratch resistant than pristine PDA and even better than hard inorganic substrates, which we attribute to partial graphitization and covalent coupling between PDA subunits during annealing. Moreover, laser annealing provides these benefits while preserving other attractive properties of PDA, as demonstrated by the superior biofouling resistance of antifouling polymer-grafted LAPDA compared to PDA modified with the same polymer. Our work suggests that laser annealing may allow the use of PDA in mechanically demanding applications previously considered inaccessible, without sacrificing the functional versatility that is so characteristic of PDA.

聚多巴胺 (PDA) 是一种简单且通用的保形涂层材料，已被提议用于多种用途；然而，在实践中，其性能常常因机械性能差和粗糙度高而受到阻碍。在此，我们表明蓝色二极管激光退火可显着提高机械性能并降低 PDA 涂层的粗糙度。激光退火 PDA (LAPDA) 的耐刮擦性比原始 PDA 高 100 倍以上，甚至比硬质无机基材更好，我们将其归因于退火过程中 PDA 亚基之间的部分石墨化和共价偶联。此外，激光退火提供了这些优点，同时保留了 PDA 的其他有吸引力的特性，防污聚合物接枝的 LAPDA 与用相同聚合物改性的 PDA 相比具有优异的抗生物污损性就证明了这一点。我们的工作表明，激光退火可以允许 PDA 在以前认为无法实现的机械要求较高的应用中使用，而不会牺牲 PDA 所特有的功能多功能性。