This paper presents a microfluidic approach for fabricating stereocomplexed hollow microcapsules that uses water‐in‐oil‐in‐water double‐emulsion droplets as templates. The polylactides functionalized with 2‐ureido‐4[1H]‐pyrimidinone (UPy) end groups are intermolecularly stereocomplexed by polylactides with opposite configurations to promote their self‐assembly at a water‐chloroform interface. This intermolecular interaction can significantly enhance the stability of resulting hollow microcapsules so that they preserve their shape and size after drying. Moreover, because these stimuli‐responsive polylactides can assemble and disassemble into superstructures, they can be made to release their cargo by varying the pH values. The interfacially assembled supramolecular microcapsules, which possess stimuli‐responsiveness and long‐term stability, are potentially useful for encapsulation and delivery of drugs.
Polylactide (PLA) is a commercially produced potentially sustainable plastic that holds promise to replace petroleum‐sourced materials. Unfortunately, the brittle nature of PLA limits its current utility to disposable packaging. Melt blends of PLA and a rubbery material can rubber toughen the plastic, but often require the addition of a compatibilizer and generate opaque materials. Current efforts explore using block and graft copolymers with a majority PLA block and minority rubbery block that phase separate on the nanometer length scale to rubber toughen PLA. With these complex architectures, the polymer matrix, the minor rubbery component, and the compatibilizer are present in one molecule. Many block and graft copolymers rely on non‐sustainable rubbery blocks, which limits the sustainability of these materials. Recent work has utilized polyisoprene (PI) as the sustainable backbone for PLA graft copolymers. Post‐polymerization functionalization and copolymerization of PI provides a method to create fully sustainable PLA/PI graft copolymers that phase separate on the nanometer‐scale to make potentially tough, sustainable plastics.
An efficient way for covering various surfaces with poly(lactic acid) (PLA) is discussed. In a first step, the material is coated with polydopamine (PDA) by air oxidation of dopamine. The resulting PDA layer acts as an initiator for ring‐opening polymerization (ROP) of lactide resulting in an outer PLA shell. Since PDA sticks to almost every solid material, the methodology has a wide scope. The strategy is demonstrated with magnetic nanoparticles and non‐magnetic powders.
The relative chain orientation of amylose and poly(l ‐lactide) (PLLA) in inclusion complexes formed by phosphorylase‐catalyzed enzymatic polymerization is made clear, by using primer–guest conjugates according to a vine‐twining polymerization manner. The conjugates, which have a maltoheptaosyl moiety at COOH‐ or OH‐terminus of poly(l ‐ and d ‐lactide)s, are synthesized by copper(I)‐catalyzed click chemistry using propargyl‐terminated polylactides (PLAs) and maltoheptaosyl azide. The cavity of amylose includes PLLA, regardless of the chain orientation, when the conjugates composed of PLLA are used on the vine‐twining polymerization. On the other hand, amylose–poly(d ‐lactide) (PDLA) diblock copolymers, which are noninclusion products, are produced when the conjugates composed of PDLA are used. X‐ray diffraction (XRD) patterns of products and gel permeation chromatography (GPC) analyses of their alkaline hydrolysates strongly support that the amylose‐PLLA inclusion supramolecular polymers are produced, probably owing to the same helical direction of amylose as that of PLLA, which is responsibly induced by its chirality, regardless of the chain orientation on complexation.
The process of microencapsulation of proteins by double emulsion/evaporation in a matrix of polylactide (PLA) can be divided into three successive steps: first, an aqueous solution of the active compound is emulsified into an organic solution of the hydrophobic coating polymer; second, this primary water-in-oil emulsion (w/o) is dispersed in water with formation of a double water-oil-water emulsion (w/o/w); third, the organic solvent is removed with formation of solid microparticles. This paper focuses on the effect of primary emulsion stability on the morphology and properties of polylactide microparticles loaded with bovine serum albumin (BSA) used as model drug. Depending on the stability of the primary emulsion, the internal structure of microparticles can be changed from a multivesicular to a matrix-like structure. Similarly, the average porosity can be controlled in a range from a few tenths of a micron to ca. 20 to 30 microns. This morphology control could find potential applications not only for the controlled drug delivery but also for the production of microporous particles intended for some specific applications, such as cell culture supports and chromatographic matrices. Although, the interplay of several processing parameters (polymer precipitation rate, polymer coprecipitation with interfacial compounds such as protein or surfactant, stirring rate, . . .) may not be disregarded, this study also indicated that a high loading of a hydrophilic drug can only be expected from a stable primary emulsion. When the stability of the primary emulsion is such as to prevent formation of macropores (>10 µm), the total pore volume is close to that of the originally dispersed aqueous drug solution. 相似文献