Influence of intermediate degradation products on the hydrolytic degradation of poly [(rac-lactide)-co-glycolide] at the air-water interface

The influence of intermediate degradation products on the hydrolytic degradation of poly[(rac-lactide)-co-glycolide] (PLGA, 50 mol% lactide) at the air-water interface is investigated using the Langmuir film balance. For that purpose, PLGA bulk samples were degraded in aqueous solution for different time periods to generate different sized fragments with varying water solubility. After dissolution in chloroform the water-insoluble degradation products are able to form Langmuir monolayers with an increased elasticity modulus by decreasing molecular weights. Water-soluble degradation products of PLGA were found to be surface active and form an adsorption layer at the air-water interface, which can be further compressed, and revealing a different adsorption behavior in dependence on their composition. The obtained results imply that measured surface area reduction as it is determined in Langmuir monolayer degradation (LMD) experiment is restricted by the effect of the surface activity of adsorbed oligomer fragments during the degradation process. The surface activity of the formed degradation products makes it difficult to derive degradation mechanism from a common LMD experiment. To elucidate the mechanism in detail, dimers, trimers and longer oligomers with known composition and end-groups have to be investigated. Copyright (C) 2015 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.