Impregnation of Environment-adaptable Degradable Polymers with Organic Compounds Using Supercritical Carbon Dioxide

摘要

We have developed environment-adaptable degradable polymers into which useful compounds, such as repellents and antibacterial agents can be incorporated. As reported previously, the incorporation of such reagents differed greatly in the experiment using the same polymer. In order to investigate such different incorporation for different reagents, the impregnation experiments were conducted using the fundamental organic compounds under scCO2 (40ºC, 20 MPa) for 3 h. Acetaldehyde, ethanol, acetic acid, ethyl acetate, phenol, toluene and naphthalene were used for the model organic compound. Five kinds of commercial degradable polymers and five kinds of synthesized poly(L-lactide) random copolymers were used as the polymer made to impregnate the compounds. Random copolymers of L-lactide (L-LA) with δ-valerolactone (VL), ε-caprolactone (CL) and tetramethylene carbonate (TEMC) were synthesized at various monomer ratios using [Sn(oct)2] as a catalyst at 150ºC for 24 h without solvent. In the impregnation experiment, these newly synthesized copolymers exhibited higher content of the compounds than those of commercial polymers: poly(butylene succinate) (PBS), poly(butylene succinate adipate) (PBSA), poly(butylene adipate terephthalate) (PBAT) and poly(ethylene succinate) (PES). Furthermore, among these synthesized L-LA random copolymers, random copolymer of L-LA with TEMC showed the highest incorporation of the organic compounds.