Abstract

Synthetic materials are applied in many branches of the industry, i.a. in medicine as a casing of apparatus, elements of artificial organs (hearts, blood vessels), catheters, wound healings, intra aortic balloons, mammary implants to mention but a few. Polymeric material used in such applications must be distinguished by a good biocompatybility. Since many years extensive research are employed to develop a new polymers that can not induce any harmful effects at the human organism and can be characterized with a good biomedical properties. Polyurethanes (PU) are one of the most widely studied synthetic biomaterials due to its good biocompatybility. PU's are macromolecular compounds synthesized from polyester polyols or polyether polyols and aliphatic (to biomedical applications) or aromatic diisocyanates and the low molecular chain extenders. Polyurethanes are unique class of polymers with a wide range of applications because of their properties can be easily tailored by changing the molar ratio or kind of substrates, the conditions of polymerization and cross linking. Depending on a primary composition of substrates and method of synthesis, polyurethanes comprises the following types of bonds: ester, ether, urethan, biuret, allophanic, carbodiimid, urea, aromatic rings of hydrocarbons and isocyanurates, ionic groups, that affords to obtain the materials with a wide range of applications. In this work, results of researches of poly(ester urethanes) modified by poly(vinyl alcohol) (PVA) were described in order to obtain biomedical materials susceptible on degradation. Poly(ester urethanes) (PEU) were synthesized in two methods: in bulk and in solvent polymerization and subsequently modified with PVA. The amount of PVA in new PEU on tensile strength, hardness, water sorption, oil sorption and physiological saline sorption were investigated.

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