Abstract
Polylactic electrospun porous fibres have been widely used in tissue engineering scaffolds. However, the application of linear polylactic is limited due to its poor hydrophilicity, which leads to phase separation and has been seldom used in porous fibre preparation. Instead, branching polylactic acts as a new effective method to prepare porous fibres because it can increase polylactic polar property and make it easy to be formulated in the following application. In the current study, we prepared an ultra-high molecular weight of high branching polylactic with glycerol as the initiator by controlling the ring-opening polymerization time, adding amount of catalyst and glycerol. The structure, molecular weight and thermal properties of copolymers were tested subsequently. The result showed that the surface of the high branching polylactic films is smooth, hydrophilic and porous. This branching polylactic formed electrospun porous fibres and possessed a strong adsorption of silver ion. Our study provided a simple and efficient way to synthesize branching polylactic polymer and prepare electrospun porous fibres, which may provide potential applications in the field of biomaterials for tissue engineering or antibacterial dressing compared with the application of linear polylactic and 3-arm polylactic materials.
Highlights
Polylactic acid (PLA) is a renewable and biodegradable biopolymer, which derives from polysaccharide compounds of natural organic matter such as starch, sugar cane and wheat straw [1]
Fourier transform infrared spectrometry (FTIR) spectra of linear PLA, 3-arm PLA and high branching PLA are shown in figure 2
The results show that linear PLA, 3arm PLA and high branching PLA-formed fibres have almost the same contact angle with these PLA polymer-formed films, indicated that the changing of morphology of electronspun fibres did not affect the hydrophilicity of the materials
Summary
Polylactic acid (PLA) is a renewable and biodegradable biopolymer, which derives from polysaccharide compounds of natural organic matter such as starch, sugar cane and wheat straw [1]. These polysaccharide compounds could be converted into lactic acid by fermentation and polymerized to obtain. While the PLA seems to be a promising material used in many fields such as food chemistry, tissue engineering and biomaterials, the clinical use of PLA is retarded due to its poor hydrophilicity which may result in the low degradation rate of the materials, adhesion of cells and inducement of non-bacterial inflammation [18 – 20]
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