TY  - JOUR
A1  - Reiche, Jürgen
A1  - Kratz, Karl
A1  - Hofmann, Dieter
A1  - Lendlein, Andreas
T1  - Current status of Langmuir monolayer degradation of polymeric biomaterials
JF  - The international journal of artificial organs
N2  - Langmuir monolayer degradation (LMD) experiments with polymers possessing outstanding biomedical application potential yield information regarding the kinetics of their hydrolytic or enzymatic chain scission under well-defined and adjustable degradation conditions. A brief review is given of LMD investigations, including the author's own work on 2-dimensional (2D) polymer systems, providing chain scission data, which are not disturbed by simultaneously occurring transport phenomena, such as water penetration into the sample or transport of scission fragments out of the sample.
 A knowledge-based approach for the description and simulation of polymer hydrolytic and enzymatic degradation based on a combination of fast LMD experiments and computer simulation of the water penetration is briefly introduced. Finally, the advantages and disadvantages of this approach are discussed.
KW  - Monolayer
KW  - Hydrolytic degradation
KW  - Enzymatic degradation
KW  - Biomaterial
KW  - Degradable polymer
Y1  - 2011
U6  - https://doi.org/10.5301/IJAO.2011.6401
SN  - 0391-3988
VL  - 34
IS  - 2
SP  - 123
EP  - 128
PB  - Wichtig
CY  - Milano
ER  - 
TY  - JOUR
A1  - Ghobadi, Ehsan
A1  - Heuchel, Matthias
A1  - Kratz, Karl
A1  - Lendlein, Andreas
T1  - Simulation of volumetric swelling of degradable poly[(rac-lactide)-co-glycolide] based polyesterurethanes containing different urethane-linkers
JF  - Journal of applied biomaterials & functional materials
N2  - Aim: The hydrolytic degradation behavior of degradable aliphatic polyester-based polymers is strongly influenced by the uptake or transport of water into the polymer matrix and also the hydrolysis rate of ester bonds.
 Methods: We examined the volumetric swelling behavior of poly[(rac-lactide)-co-glycolide] (PLGA) and PLGA-based polyurethanes (PLGA-PU) with water contents of 0 wt%, 2 wt% and 7 wt% water at 310 K using a molecular modeling approach. Polymer systems with a number average molecular weight of M-n = 10,126 g.mol(-1) were constructed from PLGA with a lactide content of 67 mol%, whereby PLGA-PU systems were composed of five PLGA segments with M-n = 2052 g.mol(-1), which were connected via urethane linkers originated from 2,2,4-trimethyl hexamethylene-1,6-diisocyanate (TMDI), hexamethyl-1,6-diisocyanate (HDI), or L-lysine-1,6-diisocyanate (LDI).
 Results: The calculated densities of the dry PLGA-PU systems were found to be lower than for pure PLGA. The obtained volumetric swelling of the PLGA-PU was depending on the type of urethane linker, whereby all swollen PLGA-PUs contained larger free volume distribution compared to pure PLGA. The mean square displacement curves for dry PLGA and PLGA-PUs showed that urethane linker units reduce the mobility of the polymer chains, while an increase in backbone atoms mobility was found, when water was added to these systems. Consequently, an increased water uptake of PLGA-PU matrices combined with a higher mobility of the chain segments should result in an accelerated hydrolytic chain scission rate in comparison to PLGA.
 Conclusions: It can be anticipated that the incorporation of urethane linkers might be a helpful tool to adjust the degradation behavior of polyesters.
KW  - Hydrolytic degradation
KW  - Molecular dynamics simulation
KW  - Polyesterurethane
Y1  - 2012
U6  - https://doi.org/10.5301/JABFM.2012.10432
SN  - 2280-8000
VL  - 10
IS  - 3
SP  - 293
EP  - 301
PB  - Wichtig
CY  - Milano
ER  -