Flow-induced polymer degradation during ink-jet printing.

We report for the first time evidence of flow-induced polymer degradation during inkjet printing for both poly(methyl methacrylate) (PMMA) and polystyrene (PS) in good solvent. This has significance for the deposition of functional and biological materials. Polymers having Mw either less than 100 kDa or greater than approximately 1,000 kDa show no evidence of molecular weight degradation. The lower boundary condition is a consequence of low Deborah Number De imposed by the printhead geometry and the upper boundary condition due to visco-elastic damping. For intermediate molecular weights the effect is greatest at high elongational strain rate and low solution concentration with higher polydispersity polymers being most sensitive to molecular weight degradation. For low polydispersity samples, PDi ≤ 1.3, chain breakage is essentially centro-symmetric induced either by turbulance or overstretching when the strain rate increases well beyond a critical value, that is the stretching rate is high enough to exceed the rate of relaxation. For higher polydispersity samples chain breakage is consistent with almost random scission along the chain, inferring that the forces required to break the chain are additionally transmitted either by valence bonds, i.e. network chains and junctions or discrete entanglements rather than solely by hydrodynamic interaction.

The effect of water-soluble polymers, PEG and PVP, on the solubilisation of griseofulvin in aqueous micellar solutions of Pluronic F127.

The purpose of this study was to investigate the possibility of enhancing the solubilisation capacity of micellar solutions of Pluronic F127 for the poorly water-soluble drug griseofulvin by co-formulating with a water-soluble polymer. The effect of the addition of the polyethylene glycols PEG6000 and 35000, and the poly(vinylpyrrolidone)s PVP K30 and K90, on the solubilisation capacity of 1wt% solutions of Pluronic F127 was related to the effect of these additives on particle size as determined by dynamic light scattering measurements. The addition of PEG35000 to 1wt% F127 solutions significantly increased the solubility capacity expressed in terms of unit weight of F127; PVP K90 had a smaller effect but no enhancement was noted following the addition of PEG6000 or PVP K30. Solubilisation enhancement was thought to be a consequence of the association of the polymers with the E-blocks of the micelle corona so providing an expanded region of reduced polarity for drug solubilisation.