Chitosan/PMMA Bioblend for Drug Release Applications

This work focuses on developing some polymers of desirable properties mainly for drug release applications. These applications require some important properties for the selected material such as (biodegradable, biocompatible, and non-toxic). Chitosan is a natural biodegradable, biocompatible and non-toxic material; therefore this material was selected in this research which is mixed with Poly (methyl methacrylate) (PMMA) polymer which has high biocompatibility to obtain different degrees of degradation. Samples with different percent of chitosan with poly (methyl methacrylate) (PMMA) including 2.5, 5, 7.5 and 10 % chitosan) are prepared. Many tests are done such as Fourier transforms spectroscopy (FTIR), tensile strength, flexural strength, biodegradability and morphology tests on the specimens. FTIR results shows grafting between PMMA and amino group of chitosan through the presence of additional absorption peaks at 1732 and 2966 cm-1 which are created through free radical mechanism, also the shifting of some peak’s wavenumbers and the increase of their intensities especially for 1643, 1450 and 3439 cm-1. Mechanical tests results showed that the flexural modulus increased by (59.77%) also the maximum tensile strength increased by (46.15%) and young's modulus increased by (53.84%) with addition of 10% chitosan, this percent decreased after immersion samples in synthetic body fluid (SBF) solution. Morphology test showed the formation of vacancies and pitting in the samples after immersion in (SBF) solution. Also the swelling, weight loss, water absorbency and porosity indicate clearly to the degradation process