Title
Biobased Terpene Derivatives: Stiff and Biocompatible Compounds to Tune Biodegradability and Properties of Poly(butylene succinate)
Date Issued
01 January 2022
Access level
open access
Resource Type
journal article
Author(s)
Zeinali R.
Franco L.
Yousef I.
Rintjema J.
Alemán C.
Bravo F.
Kleij A.W.
Puiggalí J.
Universidad Politécnica de Cataluña
Publisher(s)
MDPI
Abstract
Different copolymers incorporating terpene oxide units (e.g., limonene oxide) have been evaluated considering thermal properties, degradability, and biocompatibility. Thus, polycar-bonates and polyesters derived from aromatic, monocyclic and bicyclic anhydrides have been con-sidered. Furthermore, ring substitution with myrcene terpene has been evaluated. All polymers were amorphous when evaluated directly from synthesis. However, spherulites could be observed after the slow evaporation of diluted chloroform solutions of polylimonene carbonate, with all iso-propene units possessing an R configuration. This feature was surprising considering the reported information that suggested only the racemic polymer was able to crystallize. All polymers were thermally stable and showed a dependence of the maximum degradation rate temperature (from 242 °C to 342 °C) with the type of terpene oxide. The graduation of glass transition temperatures (from 44 °C to 172 °C) was also observed, being higher than those corresponding to the unsubsti-tuted polymers. The chain stiffness of the studied polymers hindered both hydrolytic and enzymatic degradation while a higher rate was detected when an oxidative medium was assayed (e.g., weight losses around 12% after 21 days of exposure). All samples were biocompatible according to the adhesion and proliferation tests performed with fibroblast cells. Hydrophobic and mechanically consistent films (i.e., contact angles between 90° and 110°) were obtained after the evaporation of chloroform from the solutions, having different ratios of the studied biobased polyterpenes and poly(butylene succinate) (PBS). The blend films were comparable in tensile modulus and tensile strength with the pure PBS (e.g., values of 330 MPa and 7 MPa were determined for samples incorporating 30 wt.% of poly(PA‐LO), the copolyester derived from limonene oxide and phthalic anhy-dride. Blends were degradable, biocompatible and appropriate to produce oriented‐pore and ran-dom‐pore scaffolds via a thermally‐induced phase separation (TIPS) method and using 1,4‐dioxane as solvent. The best results were attained with the blend composed of 70 wt.% PBS and 30 wt.% poly(PA‐LO). In summary, the studied biobased terpene derivatives showed promising properties to be used in a blended form for biomedical applications such as scaffolds for tissue engineering.
Volume
14
Issue
1
Language
English
OCDE Knowledge area
Ingeniería química
Scopus EID
2-s2.0-85122096286
Source
Polymers
ISSN of the container
20734360
Sponsor(s)
This project has been co‐financed by the European Regional Development Fund (ERDF) of the European Union in the framework of the Cataluña ERDF 2014‐2020 Operational Programme and by the Secretaria d’Universitats I Recerca del Departament d’Empresa I Coneixement de la Gen-eralitat de Catalunya (ref. 2018 LLAV 00078).This research was also funded by MCIN and FEDER “A way to make Europe” (grants RTI2018‐098951 and RTI2018‐101827‐B‐I00), and the Agència de Gestió dʹAjuts Universitaris i de Recerca (grants 2017SGR359 and 2017SGR373).Acknowledgments: The FTIR experiments were performed at the MIRAS beamline at the ALBA synchrotron with the collaboration of ALBA staff.
Sources of information: Directorio de Producción Científica Scopus