Author(s)

Ananta Raj Adhikari^1*, Buddhi Prasanga Tilakaratne¹, Dharshana Wijesundera¹, Wei-Kan Chu^1,2

¹Texas Center for Superconductivity, University of Houston, Houston, USA.
²Department of Physics, University of Houston, Houston, USA.

The effect of Argon ion irradiation to the surface properties of poly(lactic-co-glycolic) acid (PLGA) was studied. A beam of 170 keV Argon ions was implanted at different fluencies (1 × 10¹², 1 × 10¹³, 1 × 10¹⁴, and 1 × 10¹⁵ ions/cm²). X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy (XPS) was used to analyze the evolution of the bonding microstructure of PLGA due to irradiation. Surface morphology was monitored using atomic force microscopy (AFM). AFM analysis shows that film roughness increased to maximum at the dose of 1 × 10¹⁴ ions/cm² where the formations of hillocks were also detected. Hydrophilicity of PLGA is important for their applications in biomedicine such as bioscaffolds. Hydrophilicity was monitored using water contact angle measurements for both unmodified and ion-modified PLGA. It was observed that hydrophilicity of PLGA changes with the ion irradiation. This demonstrates that ion irradiation can be an alternative approach to control hydrophilicity of PLGA. PLGA scaffolds modified with ion irradiation could therefore be more suitable for the biomedical applications.

Poly(lactic-co-glycolic) Acid Scaffold, Surface Modification, Ion Irradiation

Adhikari, A. , Tilakaratne, B. , Wijesundera, D. and Chu, W. (2014) A Study of Surface Modification of Poly(lactic-co-glycolic) Acid Using Argon Ion Irradiation. Journal of Surface Engineered Materials and Advanced Technology, 4, 326-331. doi: 10.4236/jsemat.2014.46036.