Characterization of the polycaprolactone melt crystallization: complementary optical microscopy, DSC, and AFM studies.

The first stages of the crystallization of polycaprolactone (PCL) were studied using several techniques. The crystallization exotherms measured by differential scanning calorimetry (DSC) were analyzed and compared with results obtained by polarized optical microscopy (POM), rheology, and atomic force microscope (AFM). The experimental results suggest a strong influence of the observation scale.

Effect of supramolecular structures on thermoplastic zein-lignin bionanocomposites.

The effect of alkaline lignin (AL) and sodium lignosulfonate (LSS) on the structure of thermoplastic zein (TPZ) was studied. Protein structural changes and the nature of the physical interaction between lignin and zein were investigated by means of X-ray diffraction and Fourier transform infrared (FT-IR) spectroscopy and correlated with physical properties. Most relevant protein structural changes were observed at low AL concentration, where strong H-bondings between the functional groups of AL and the amino acids in zein induced a destructuring of inter- and intramolecular interactions in α-helix, β-sheet, and β-turn secondary structures.

Image processing and fractal box counting: user-assisted method for multi-scale porous scaffold characterization.

Image analysis has gained new effort in the scientific community due to the chance of investigating morphological properties of three dimensional structures starting from their bi-dimensional gray-scale representation. Such ability makes it particularly interesting for tissue engineering (TE) purposes. Indeed, the capability of obtaining and interpreting images of tissue scaffolds, extracting morphological and structural information, is essential to the characterization and design of engineered porous systems.

Biodegradable bioartificial materials made with chitosan and poly(vinyl alcohol). Part I: Physicochemical characterization.

Polymers have widespread applications in therapeutics, and their use can play important structural and functional roles in different disease conditions. Bioartificial biodegradable materials, to be used as biomaterials and, in particular, as localized drug carriers, were prepared mixing chitosan (CHI) and poly(vinyl alcohol) (PVA), then manufactured as films, and finally cross-linked with glutaraldehyde (GTA), both in the absence and in the presence of the edible plasticizer sorbitol (SOR). The materials were characterized by Fourier-transform infrared (FTIR) spectroscopy, differential scanning calorimetry (DSC), ther-mogravimetric analysis (TGA), X-ray diffraction, scanning electron microscopy (SEM), and tensile test.