Modeling and Experimental Investigation of Rheological Properties of Injectable Poly(lactide ethylene oxide fumarate)/Hydroxyapatite Nanocomposites

Injectable multiphasic polymer/ceramic composites are attractive as bioresorbable scaffolds for bone regeneration because they can be cross-linked in situ and are osteoconductive. The injectability of the composite depends on the nanoparticle content and the energetic interactions at the polymer/particle interface. The objective of this research was to determine experimentally the rheological properties of the PLEOF/apatite composite as an injectable biomaterial and to compare the viscoelastic response with the predictions of a linear elastic dumbbell model. A degradable in situ cross-linkable terpolymer based on low molecular weight poly(l-lactide) and poly(ethylene oxide) linked by unsaturated fumarate groups is synthesized. The poly(l-lactide-co-ethylene oxide-co-fumarate) (PLEOF) terpolymer interacts with the surface of the apatite nanoparticles by polar interactions and hydrogen bonding. A kinetic model is developed that takes into account the adsorption/desorption of polymer chains to/from the nanoparticle surface. Rheological properties of the aqueous dispersion of PLEOF terpolymer reinforced with nanosized hydroxyapatite (HA) particles are investigated using mechanical rheometry. To this end, we performed a series of rheological experiments on un-cross-linked PLEOF reinforced with different volume fractions of HA nanoparticles. The results demonstrate that the observed nonlinear viscoelasticity at higher shear rates is controlled by the energetic interactions between the polymer chains and dispersed particle aggregates and by the rate of the adsorption/desorption of the chains to/from the surface of the nanoparticles.