Swelling and Drug Release in Polymers through the Theory of Poisson–Kac Stochastic Processes

Abstract

Experiments on swelling and solute transport in polymeric systems clearly indicate that the classical parabolic models fail to predict typical non-Fickian features of sorption kinetics. The formulation of moving-boundary transport models for solvent penetration and drug release in swelling polymeric systems is addressed hereby employing the theory of Poisson–Kac stochastic processes possessing finite propagation velocity. The hyperbolic continuous equations deriving from Poisson–Kac processes are extended to include the description of the temporal evolution of both the Glass–Gel and the Gel–Solvent interfaces. The influence of polymer relaxation time on sorption curves and drug release kinetics is addressed in detail.

Keywords

• swelling
• non-Fickian transport
• drug release
• Poisson–Kac processes
• moving-boundary models