In this study, porous polylactide（PLA） microspheres with different structures were prepared through the multiple emulsion solvent evaporation method. By changing organic solvents（ethyl acetate and chloroform） and adding effervescent salt NH4 HCO3 in the inner water phase, microspheres with porous capsular, matrix, microcapsular and multivesicular structures were prepared. The protein encapsulation and release, and the cell growth behavior of porous microspheres were further explored. Under the same inner water phase, microspheres prepared with chloroform had higher protein encapsulation efficiency and less protein release rate as compared with those prepared with ethyl acetate. Cell experiments showed that the relatively rough surface of microspheres prepared with chloroform was more favorable for the cell growth in comparison with the smooth surface of microspheres prepared with ethyl acetate. This study shows a simple and effective method to control the protein release and cell growth behaviors of polymer microspheres by tuning their porous structure.
Poly（D,L-lactide-co-glycolide）（PLGA） microspheres were prepared by emulsion solvent evaporation method. The influences of inner aqueous phase, organic solvent, PLGA concentration on the morphology of microspheres were studied. The results showed that addition of porogen or surfactants to the inner aqueous phase, types of organic solvents and polymer concentration affected greatly the microsphere morphology. When dichloromethane was adopted as organic solvent, microspheres with porous structure were produced. When ethyl acetate served as organic solvent, two different morphologies were obtained. One was hollow microspheres with thin porous shell under a lower PLGA concentration, another was erythrocyte-like microspheres under a higher PLGA concentration. Three types of microspheres including porous, hollow core with thin porous shell（denoted by hollow in brief） and solid structures were finally selected for in vitro drug release tests. Bovine serum albumin（BSA） was chosen as model drug and encapsulated within the microspheres. The BSA encapsulation efficiency of porous, hollow and solid microspheres was respectively 90.4%, 79.8% and 0. And the ultimate accumulative release was respectively 74.5%, 58.9% and 0. The release rate of porous microspheres was much slower than that of hollow microspheres. The experiment results indicated that microspheres with different porous structures showed great potentials in controlling drug release behavior.
Oriented and non-oriented Teflon films, which were found to have the same crystalline structure, but different surface morphologies, were used to sandwich poly（butylene adipate） （PBA） films during isothermal crystallization. It was found that both the Teflon surface structure and the PBA polymorphic structure are the determining factors to induce epitaxial crystallization. The oriented Teflon film was able to induce epitaxial crystallization of PBA α crystal, while the non-oriented Teflon did not induce any epitaxial crystallization of PBA. Epitaxial crystallization did not occurred for PBA β crystals between neither the oriented nor the non-oriented Teflon films. The enzymatic degradation rate of PBA films was not determined by the epitaxial crystallization, in fact it was still dependent on the polymorphic crystal structure of PBA. The morphological changes of PBA films after enzymatic degradation confirmed again that the epitaxial crystallization only occurred for the PBA film with α crystal structure which was produced by being sandwiched between oriented Teflon films, and it happened only on the surface of PBA films.
