Preparation of Porous Poly(3-Hydroxybutyrate) Films by Water-Droplet Templating

Journal article, 2012

Porous resorbable implants are of great interest since they may deliver bioactives or drug s, facilitate the transport of body fluids or degradation products and provide a favorable environment for cell attachment and growth. In this work we report on a method using concentrated emulsions to template interconnected solid foam materials and to produce highly porous poly(3-hydroxybutyrate) (PHB) materials. Porous PHB films were cast made from water-in-oil template emulsions including Span 80 and lithium sulphate. The films were characterized by SEM-EDX and DMA. The water uptake of the films was recorded in orde r to determine the fraction water available pores. The results show that the ad- dition of lithium sulphate allows a fine tuning of the film morphology with respect to porosity and interconnected po- rous structure. The film porosity was determined to 51% ± 3%, 52% ± 3% and 45% ± 3% for the films made with 0%, 2.9% and 14.3% lithium sulphate in the template emulsion , respectively. The fraction water available pores was sig- nificantly lower, 11% ±3%, 38% ±12% and 48% ± 7% for films with 0%, 2.9% and 14.3% litium sulphate respectively. Differences in fraction water available pores and total porosity for the films reflects the film morphology and differ- ences in pore interconnection.