Surface-modifying endgroups for biomedical polymers

A surface active endgroup-containing polymer that comprises a linear base polymer having covalently bonded surface active endgroups of a nature and present in an amount such that said polymer has a contact angle hysteresis of the surface that is changed by at least 5% from the contact angle hysteresis of the surface of an otherwise identical polymer that does not contain said covalently bonded surface active endgroups.

A segmented block copolymer comprising from about 5 to 45 weight % of at least one hard segment, from about 95 to 55 weight % of at least one soft segment, and from about 0.1 to 15 weight % of at least one surface active endgroup.

A polymeric composition of matter having the formula

• A.sub.p A'.sub.1-p [BCD].sub.n Z.sub.q Z'.sub.1-q
• wherein p and q may be the same or different and each is a number from 0 through 1, n is a number from 5 through 10.sup.5, A is a surface active endgroup, A' is a surface active endgroup different from A, Z is a surface active endgroup that may be the same as one of or different from both of A and A', and z" is a surface active endgroup that is different from Z but may be the same as one of or different from both of A and A', B is a polymer block, C is a polymer block which may be the same as or different from B, and D is a polymer block which may be the same as one of or different from both of B and C.