Since the early 1960s, synthetic biodegradable polymers have been widely used in biomedical applications due to their large chemical diversity and the reproducible properties. However, the local acidification during degradation has shown to cause significant inflammation that can lead to device or implant failure. It is necessary to design new biodegradable polymer systems that do not cause local acidosis during degradation.

To facilitate this requirement, Becker group has developed the amino acid-based poly(ester urea)s. These polymers are semi-crystalline. Their hydrolysis byproducts are non-toxic and can be self-buffered by the presence of the urea linkage at each repeat unit. In addition, there is a tremendous physical and chemical landscape that is available for exploration by using different natural amino acids with different pendant groups and different diols.

This dissertation outlines our efforts to develop biodegradable polymers with tunable mechanical properties, degradation rates, and bioactivity. We varied the diol chain length (Chapter 3), branch density (Chapter 4), bioceramic contents (Chapter 5) in the poly(ester urea) system; cis/trans ratio (Chapter 6) in the biodegradable elastomer system and studied how these subtle structural differences would influence the mechanical properties and water uptake ability. Based on their tunable physical properties, these materials can be selected and used for various biomedical applications (Chapter 7).