Combining renewable resource biopolymers with fluoropolymers: Where green meets mean

POLY 650

Dahlia Haynes, dahliah@clemson.edu1, D. W. Smith Jr., dwsmith@clemson.edu2, Amit Naskar1, and Akhilesh Singh, asingh@clemson.edu3. (1) Department of Chemistry, Clemson University, Hunter Lab 443, Clemson, SC 29634, (2) Department of Chemistry; Center for Optical Materials Science and Engineering Technologies (COMSET), Clemson University, Advanced Materials Research Laboratory, Clemson, SC 29634, (3) School of Materials Science and Engineering, Clemson University, 41 Serrine Hall, Clemson, SC 29634
Novel triblock polylactide-perfluoropolyether-polylactide copolymers has been synthesized via ring opening polymerization of lactide in the presence of a perfluoropolyether as macroinitiator using Sn(Oct)2 as catalyst. 5-20 wt % incorporation of the perfluoropolyether moiety was successfully incorporated employing this polymerization strategy. Contact angle measurements shows that the introduction of the hydrophobic perfluoropolyether unit lowers the surface energy dramatically and enhances the tensile strength of PLA alone. The amount of PFPE included will be able to vary the hydrolytic stability and degradation rate of the material due to the lower surface energies that can be achieved, rendering the material more suitable for medical applications. DSC results show the increase in elastomeric properties of the material as the amount of PFPE increases and TGA analysis shows a high increase in thermal stability over PLA. The triblock PLA-PFPE-PLA copolymers were characterized by NMR, GPC, optical microscopy, DSC and TGA techniques.
 

7th International Biorelated Polymers Symposium
8:30 AM-11:40 AM, Thursday, 14 September 2006 San Francisco Marriott -- Salon 14/15, Oral

Division of Polymer Chemistry

The 232nd ACS National Meeting, San Francisco, CA, September 10-14, 2006