Analysis of commercial plastination agents.

S3, S6 and S10 are the most commonly used agents for tissue plastination. Surprisingly, their chemical structures are not known. We therefore decided to fully characterize these products by standard analytical methods: multinucleus magnetic resonance, infrared spectroscopy and size exclusion chromatography. These experiments have shown that Biodur S10 is a polydimethylsiloxane with a molecular weight of 27,200 and silanol functionalities, Biodur S6 is tetraethoxysilane, and Biodur S3 is a mixture the main component of which is dibutyltindilaurate.