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Updated: Jul 4, 2026

Fabricating Superhydrophobic Polymeric Materials for Biomedical Applications
Published on: August 28, 2015
Moisture sorption, transport, and hydrolytic degradation in polylactide
Richard A Cairncross1, Jeffrey G Becker, Shri Ramaswamy
1Chemical and Biological Engineering, Drexel University, Philadelphia, PA 19104, USA. cairncross@drexel.edu
Abstract:
Management of moisture penetration and hydrolytic degradation of polylactide (PLA) is extremely important during the manufacturing, shipping, storage, and end-use of PLA products. Moisture transport, crystallization, and degradation, in PLA have been measured through a variety of experimental techniques including size-exclusion chromatography, differential scanning calorimetry, and X-ray diffraction. Quartz crystal microbalance and dynamic vapor sorption experiments have also been used to measure moisture sorption isotherms in PLA films with varying crystallinity. A surprising result is that, within the accuracy of the experiments, crystalline and amorphous PLA films exhibit identical sorption isotherms.
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