Steric Stabilization of Polylactide particles achieved by Covalent 'grafting-from' with Hydrophilic Polymers

Despite numerous advantages of using particles in a wide range of applications, they have one drawback that is their tendency to agglomerate. One way to overcome this problem is to sterically stabilize the particles by introducing polymeric chains covalently attached to the surface. Surface modification by covalently attaching polymer chains to the particle surface can be achieved by e.g. a ‘grafting-from’ technique under UV irradiation. In this thesis, polylactide (PLA) particles were surface modified, under UV irradiation, with the hydrophilic monomers: acrylamide (AAm), acrylic acid (AA), and maleic anhydride (MAH). The developed ‘grafting-from’ technique was shown to be nondestructive method for surface modification of PLA particles of two different geometries. The change in surface chemistry of the PLA particles was confirmed by FTIR and XPS, indicating the success of the surface grafting technique. Force interaction between two surface grafted PLA substrates was measured by colloidal probe AFM in different salt concentrations. In order to understand the repulsive force, the AFM force profiles were compared to the DLVO theory and AdG model. Long range repulsive interactions were mainly observed when hydrophilic polymers were covalently attached to the surface of PLA particles, leading to steric interaction. Attractive force dominated the interaction when neat PLA particle was approaching each other, resulting in particle aggregation, even though short range repulsion was observed at small separation distance, i.e. approximately 10 nm. Attractive interaction was also observed when neat PLA was approaching to PAA-grafted PLA substrate. This attractive interaction was much greater than force interaction between two neat PLA substrates. The surface grafted particles can be used in biomedical application where secondary interactions are important to overcome particle agglomeration such as particle-based drug delivery.