Figure - PMC

Skip to main content

An official website of the United States government

Here's how you know

Here's how you know

Official websites use .gov
A .gov website belongs to an official government organization in the United States.

Secure .gov websites use HTTPS
A lock ( ) or https:// means you've safely connected to the .gov website. Share sensitive information only on official, secure websites.

View full-text article in PMC

. 2021 Jul 15;11:14512. doi: 10.1038/s41598-021-93785-6

Search in PMC
Search in PubMed
View in NLM Catalog
Add to search

© The Author(s) 2021

Open Access This article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License, which permits use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons licence, and indicate if changes were made. The images or other third party material in this article are included in the article's Creative Commons licence, unless indicated otherwise in a credit line to the material. If material is not included in the article's Creative Commons licence and your intended use is not permitted by statutory regulation or exceeds the permitted use, you will need to obtain permission directly from the copyright holder. To view a copy of this licence, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/.

PMC Copyright notice

Interplay of expansive intermolecular forces. (a) Schematic of microparticle swelling over time. Grey circles represent microparticles. Yellow circles represent the development of an acidic core region and the lightning bolt signifying point of substantial swelling. (b) Insets represent the hydrolysis, degradation, hydration shell and swelling that occurs over time in terms of active chemistry. (c) The corresponding general view of water ingress over time, subsequent hydrolysis of polymer, and ultimate expansion of relaxed, ionized polymer chains (grey lines represent PLGA polymer chains and blue dots represent water molecules). (d) Swelling profile timeline as it correlates with the schematic (taken from 23 µm population data).