Microwave‐assisted poly(<scp>D</scp>,<scp>L</scp>‐lactide) synthesis in toluene and tetrahydrofuran
Bibliographic record
Abstract
Abstract Poly( d , l ‐lactide) is a biocompatible and biodegradable polymer with applications in the biomedical field (drug delivery, implants) and packaging. Conventional synthesis with stannous octoate is slow (>4 h) and can climb to over 30 h. In order to reduce reaction times, we developed a microwave reactor process to ring‐open polymerize d , l ‐lactide to form poly( d , l ‐lactide) in the presence of stannous octoate and an initiator, benzyl alcohol. We evaluated the suitability of toluene and tetrahydrofuran as solvents at 130, 150, and 170°C for the polymerization. Their respective dielectric loss values are 0.1 and 0.35. Compounds with larger dielectric loss values are better at converting microwave energy to heat. The microwave's power input peaked at 420 W to reach 170°C with toluene, whereas with tetrahydrofuran the peak was 330 W; afterwards, the power input to maintain that temperature was 10 W for both solvents. A reaction in toluene at 170°C after 1 h produced poly( d , l ‐lactide) with a molecular weight of 31 kDa and a dispersity index of 1.5. In tetrahydrofuran, at the same temperature, the molecular weight peaked at 11 kDa after 4 h with a dispersity index of 1.2. Moreover, in the absence of microwaves the polymerization does not occur. Tetrahydrofuran is hygroscopic and water cleaves poly( d , l ‐lactide) chains resulting in a lower molecular weight despite the longer reaction time and larger dielectric loss compared to toluene, a water immiscible solvent.
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How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame machine prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. The Gemma side is a direct model label for every work in the frame, read from the title-only record. The Codex side is a classifier learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and calibrated to design-weighted sample rates; fields without enough sample support carry no Codex call. Candidate is the union of the two sides; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels.
Distilled classifier scores by category (both heads)
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Open science | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Research integrity | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.001 | 0.000 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one source (direct Gemma or distilled Codex), not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".