A good strategy to prevent early deposition of bacteria that can form biofilms is the application of antimicrobial coatings to existing surfaces, however this field has been little explored and coatings are often non uniform in thickness. A homogeneous film of R-Carvone-Octadiene (ppCop) was deposited on different substrates (coverslip, minced coverslip and fabric) by cold plasma copolymerization to study the influence of the substrate on antimicrobial activity and show clues about the influence of octadiene on copolymerization. The ppCop showed better antimicrobial activity results on the substrate with higher effective contact area, highlighting the influence of this variable on antimicrobial activity. The ppCop deposited on minced coverslip showed an inhibition of E. coli and S. aureus bacteria by 48.69 ±0.08% and 49.31 ±0.58% respectively, with an average roughness of 14.1±0.02 nm and a static water contact angle of 79± 0.4°. The ppCop showed no cytotoxicity to the human cell line.

Authors would like to acknowledge the following grant for this paper: Consejo Nacional de Humanidades Ciencia y Tecnología (CONAHCYT), postdoctoral fellowship 2020 (grant 6012). They also would like to thank M. García Zamora, María de Lourdes Guillén Cisneros, M. G. Mendez-Padilla for their technical support with some of the analytical techniques. Also, thanks to L. López and O. Pérez Camacho (from Centro de Investigación en Química Aplicada) for their comments on this research.