Processing, degradation and applications of synthetic biodegradable polymers: A review

Biodegradable polymers can either be natural or synthetic and they have been greatly applied across fields especially in medicals due to their bioabsorbability, biocompatibility and biodegradability. A lot had been achieved through the efforts of polymer scientist in using synthetic materials in human body and this is due to the versatility and biodiversity of the materials. Synthetic biodegradable polymers in general are of greater advantage over natural materials in that they can be tailored to give a wider range of properties and have more predictable lot-to-lot uniformity than materials from natural sources. Lately, there is a large increase in the use of these polymer materials in ecological applications, packaging, and pharmaceutics and even in agriculture. Hence, researchers have also intensified efforts to make these polymer based materials eco-friendly so as to reduce the pollution problems such as blockage of drainages and littering of the environment by these polymeric materials. In this review however, we will focus on synthetic biodegradable with emphasis on their mode of degradation, applications and processing conditions.