Poly(3-hydroxybutyrate) (PHB) is a polyester which shows excellent biocompatibility and a PHB material is therefore considered\r\nsuitable for many biomedical applications. A highly porous PHB material may be designed to facilitate the transport of small\r\nmolecules and body fluids or serve as a biocompatible temporary barrier. In this study,PHBfilms with varying degree of porosity and\r\npore interconnectivitywere made by solvent casting usingwater-in-oil emulsion templates of varying composition.Themorphology\r\nwas characterized by SEMand the water permeability of the films was determined.The results show that an increased water content\r\nof the template emulsion resulted in a film with increased porosity. A fine tuning of the film morphology of the casted films was\r\nachieved by varying the salt content of the water phase of the template emulsion. The porosity of these films was roughly the same\r\nbut the water permeability varied between 23�·10-13 and 1486�·10-13 m2/s. It was concluded that themajor determinant of the water\r\npermeability through these films is the pore interconnectivity. Furthermore, we report on the formation and water permeability of\r\nbilayer PHB films consisting of a porous layer combined with a dense backing layer.
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