A multi-scale method for modeling degradation of bioresorbable polyesters.

Unlabelled: A multi-scale model using the cellular automata (CA) and kinetic Monte Carlo (KMC) methods is presented to simulate the degradation process of bioresorbable polyesters such as polylactide (PLA), polyglycolide (PGA) and their copolymers. The model considers the underlying chemical and physical events such as polymer chain scission, oligomer production, crystallization induced by polymer chain scissions, oligomer diffusion and microstructure evolution due to erosion of the small chains. A macroscopic device is discretized into an array of mesoscopic cells.