Tailoring/Tuning Properties of Polyester Urea-Urethanes through Hybridization with Titania Obtained Using the Sol-Gel Process

Polymers (Basel). 2023 May 13;15(10):2299. doi: 10.3390/polym15102299.

Abstract

Hybrid materials have been studied because in these materials the properties of organic components, such as elasticity and biodegradability, could be combined with the properties of inorganic components, such as good biological response, thereby transforming them into a single material with improved properties. In this work, Class I hybrid materials based on polyester-urea-urethanes and titania were obtained using the modified sol-gel method. This was corroborated using the FT-IR and Raman techniques which highlighted the formation of hydrogen bonds and the presence of Ti-OH groups in the hybrid materials. In addition, the mechanical and thermal properties and degradability were measured using techniques, such as Vickers hardness, TGA, DSC, and hydrolytic degradation; these properties could be tailored according to hybridization between both organic and inorganic components. The results show that Vickers hardness increased by 20% in hybrid materials as compared to polymers; also, the surface hydrophilicity increases in the hybrid materials, improving their cell viability. Furthermore, cytotoxicity in vitro test was carried out using osteoblast cells for intended biomedical applications and they showed non-cytotoxic behavior.

Keywords: hybrid materials; polyester-urea-urethanes; tailoring properties; tissue engineering.

Grants and funding

This work was supported by project PID2020-119047RB-I00, financed by spanish Ministerio de Ciencia e Innovación (MCIN/AEI/10.13039/501100011033/), CONACYT and IPN-SIP/20201294 from Mexico for the fellowship grant number 393020 and DPI 2017-90147-R from MINECO-AEI, Spain for the fund.