Synthesis Approaches of Bio-Degradable Polymer Materials

Abstract

Numerous polymer materials are used in various fields of human’s life. However, for traditional petro-based polymer materials, because of the pollutants produced during the process of fabrication, as well as their difficulty in degradation and recycle, they contribute to major environmental issues such resource waste, global warming, and white pollution. In order to address those problems, an important way is to produce and apply more biodegradable polymer materials, which can be easily cycled in nature. Biodegradable polymers can be produced using a variety of synthetic approaches, including directly chemical synthesis, natural polymer modification, microbial synthesis, and enzymatic synthesis. These approaches offer biodegrable polymer materials both better mechanical or thermal properties as well as biodegradability, which make them desirable and appropriate for the application in diverse fields. The basic concept and mechanism of biodegradation of biodegradable polymers are discussed in this review, along with a presentation of various synthesis approaches and their related studies recently.