Solvent‐Free Fabrication of polyHIPE Microspheres for Controlled Release of Growth Factors

The growth factor bone morphogenetic protein 2 (BMP‐2) is utilized in surgical procedures to improve bone regeneration; however, current treatments deliver BMP‐2 at amounts greater than 100 000 fold of physiological levels, which increases treatment costs and risk of side effects. Drug‐eluting microcarriers developed to improve these therapies have faced significant commercialization challenges including particle size distributions, solvent removal, low encapsulation efficiency, and bioactivity loss. In this study, a solvent‐free method is presented for fabrication of uniform polyHIPE microspheres for controlled growth factor release. Emulsion templating principles and fluid dynamics were used to fabricate uniform particles with tunable particle size (200–800 μm) and pore size (10–30 μm). The ability to independently tune particle and pore size is expected to provide excellent control of release kinetics. Overall, this solvent‐free method for making porous microspheres displays strong promise for the controlled release of BMP‐2 and other growth factors.

     

TG-DTA/GC-MS study of odorless woodceramics from chicken wastes

Summary An odorless woodceramics (CH800), which was prepared by carbonizing chicken wastes with phenolic resin, was characterized by XRD and thermal analysis. CH800 was found to consist mainly of amorphous carbon (non-graphitizing carbon) as studied by XRD. Differing from carbonized chicken waste, CH800 was completely free of unfavorable smell. The source of strong smell of carbonized chicken waste was studied by using TG-DTA combined with EGA technique using gas chromatography and mass spectrometry (TG-DTA/GC-MS). As a result, it was found that CH800 was completely free of compounds having strong smell, i.e., ethanol, acetonitrile, pyridine, styrene, benzonitrile and benzofuran, whereas carbonized chicken waste contained all of these compounds.     

PE/Org-MMT nanocomposites

The non-isothermal crystallization kinetics of polyethylene (PE), PE/organic-montmorillonite (Org-MMT) composites were investigated by differential scanning calorimetry (DSC) with various cooling rates. The Avrami analysis modified by Jeziorny and a method developed by Mo were employed to describe the non-isothermal crystallization process of these samples very well. The difference in the exponent n between PE and PE/Org-MMT nanocomposites, indicated that non-isothermal kinetic crystallization corresponded to tridimensional growth with heterogeneous nucleation. The values of half-time, Z_c and F(T) showed that the crystallization rate increased with the increasing of cooling rates for PE and PE/Org-MMT composites, but the crystallization rate of PE/Org-MMT composite was faster than that of PE at a given cooling rate. The method developed by Ozawa did not describe the non-isothermal crystallization process of PE very well. Moreover, the method proposed by Kissinger was used to evaluate the activation energy of the mentioned samples. The results showed that the activation energy of PE/Org-MMT was greatly larger than that of PE. This revised version was published online in July 2006 with corrections to the Cover Date.     

Wasserbestimmung

Analytical and Bioanalytical Chemistry -