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Materials Chemistry

Pepperdine University

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Biodegradable Copolymers Made With Magnesium Complexes, Reile M. Slattery, Joseph M. Fritsch Apr 2016

Biodegradable Copolymers Made With Magnesium Complexes, Reile M. Slattery, Joseph M. Fritsch

Seaver College Research And Scholarly Achievement Symposium

In this study, a bis-ligated magnesium complex was used to initiate the ring opening copolymerization of L-lactide (L-LA) and ϵ-caprolatone (ϵCL) and the isolated polymeric materials were characterized with NMR spectroscopy. First, the simultaneous feeding of both monomers resulted in the synthesis of homopolymer poly-lactic acid (PLA). Polymerization experiments with sequential addition of L-LA and ϵCL yielded surprising results. The ring opening polymerization of ϵCL yielded poly-caprolactone (PCL) which with the addition of L-LA yielded a di-block copolymer of PCL and PLA. The presence of the two homopolymer blocks in the copolymer was identified with 13C NMR where …