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5Raman evaluation of structure of poly(L-lactide-co-s-caprolactone) and poly(L-lactide)/poly(s-caprolactone) blends
S.O. Liubimovskii1, V.S. Novikov12*, S.M. Kuznetsov12, E.V. Anokhin3, V.A. Demina3 4, N.G. Sedush34, S.N. Chvalun3 4, E.A. Sagitova1, G.Yu. Nikolaeva1, M.N. Moskovskiy2, S.V. Gudkov12
1-Prokhorov General Physics Institute of the Russian Academy of Sciences, Vavilov Str. 38, 119991 Moscow,
Russian Federation
2- Federal Scientific Agronomic and Engineering Center VIM, 1st Institutsky proezd 5, 109428 Moscow, Russian
Federation
3- Enikolopov Institute of Synthetic Polymeric Materials of the Russian Academy of Sciences, Profsoyuznaya St.
70, 117393 Moscow, Russian Federation 4-National Research Centre "Kurchatov Institute", Akademika Kurchatova Pl. 1, 123182 Moscow, Russian
Federation
Biodegradable and biocompatible poly(L-lactide-co-s-caprolactone) and poly(L-lactide)/poly(s-caprolactone) blends have great potential for applications in various fields, including tissue engineering, drug delivery systems and packaging materials. The physical and chemical properties of these copolymers and blends can be varied in a flexible way by changing by the conditions of the synthesis and treatment. In particular, the properties can be effectively adjusted by varying the relative contents of the co-monomers or blend components.
Fig. 1. Raman spectra of poly(L-lactide)/poly(e-caprolactone) blends. The spectra are recorded at the 785 nm excitation.
Raman spectroscopy is a powerful tool to study the structure of molecular substances in terms of the chemical composition, configurational, conformation and phase order. The aim of this work is the development of Raman methods for structural analysis of poly(L-lactide-co-s-caprolactone) and poly(L-lactide)/poly(s-caprolactone) blends.
As an example, Fig. 1 demonstrates two regions of Raman spectra of poly(L-lactide)/poly(s-caprolactone) blends with different contents of the blend components. We showed that analysis of the Raman spectra in the region at around 3000 cm-1 allows to evaluate the chemical composition of the copolymers and blends, while analysis of the poly(L-lactide) band at around 410 cm-1 makes it possible to evaluate the crystallinity degree of poly(L-lactide) areas in these materials. To confirm the conclusions, based on Raman data, we also applied two traditional methods: X-ray diffraction analysis and differential scanning calorimetry.
This study was supported by the Russian Science Foundation under the grant № 23-22-00347, https://rscf.ru/en/project/23-22-00347/.
