Application of the principal component analysis method in the biodegradation polyurethanes evaluation

In the last decades polyurethanes have been studied as biodegradable and biocompatible materials, especially for the use in the biomedical engineering area. In the present work, the biodegradation of polyurethanes of different composition was evaluated by Fourier Transformed Infrared spectroscopy (FTIR) and Principal Components Analysis (PCA). In general, it was noticed that the samples with 1,4-butanediol containing the lowest glucose content constituted a group that was considerably different from all the others. These samples did not show any considerable variations in their infrared spectra within four months of biodegradation and a more significant variation was observed only after 12 months of biodegradation. It was also observed that the polyurethane samples based on sucrose were more biodegraded. The use of the chemometric tools particularly the Principal Component Analysis applied to the infrared spectra allowed us to reach a better identification of the chemical modifications occurred before and after the biodegradation.