Soil burial degradation studies of photo-crosslinked PCL-PDMS-PCL triblock copolymer films

This article focuses on the soil burial degradation behavior of photo-crosslinked Polycaprolactone (PCL) homopolymer and Polycaprolactone-Polydimethylsiloxane-Polycaprolactone (PCL-PDMS-PCL) triblock copolymer films. PCL homopolymer and PCL-PDMS-PCL triblock copolymer films with varying the chain length of PCL were synthesized. The microlevel, macrolevel, and structural changes in the samples of homopolymer and triblock copolymer were analyzed before and after soil burial test. Microlevel changes were determined by the evaluation of morphological properties with the digital camera, optical microscope (OM), and scanning electron microscope (SEM) images. These changes revealed that the degradation of copolymer films enhanced with increasing PCL chain length. The Macrolevel structural changes were examined by Fourier transform infrared spectroscopy (FTIR) and Differential Scanning Calorimetry (DSC) crystallinity. The soil burial degradation mechanism was proposed for PCL-PDMS-PCL triblock copolymer films based on the obtained results.