Abstract
Cardanol (CD), derived from renewable natural cashew nutshell liquid, has been used as a new plasticizer for polylactide (PLA), to create blends which retain the environmentally friendly features of PLA. The differential scanning calorimetry (DSC), dynamic mechanical thermal analysis (DMTA) and scanning electron microscopy (SEM) results all reveal that PLA and CD show good miscibility at low CD content. CD significantly decreased the glass transition temperature and enhanced the crystallization ability of PLA, demonstrating good plasticizing efficiency with PLA. At 10 wt% CD, ultimate elongation and impact toughness increased to 472% and 9.4 kJ m−2, respectively, which represented improvements of 31-fold and 2.6-fold over the corresponding measurements for neat PLA. The plasticization effect of CD was also demonstrated by the decreased melt complex viscosity and shear storage modulus at lower CD content for the blends when compared with neat PLA. Thus, the investigated CD presents an interesting candidate for a PLA plasticizer, meeting “double green” criteria. No cytotoxicity was found for the blends and hence they may be suitable for biomedical applications.
Highlights
Polylactide (PLA), a most popular green plastic, provides a promising alternative to polymers derived from petroleum, and attracts much interest.[1,2,3] Because of its renewability, biodegradability, biocompatibility and competitive physical properties, PLA has been applied in biomedical materials, packaging, and the automotive industry
Samples were exposed to Co60 for 15 min and incubated in Dulbecco's modi ed Eagle's medium (DMEM) at the ratio of 3 cm[2] mLÀ1 for 24 h at 37 C
For PLA/CD-10, a pronounced yield followed by a stable neck is observed; the tensile strength drops to 25.1 MPa and the elongation at break increases to 472%, representing a 31-fold improvement over the value for neat PLA
Summary
Polylactide (PLA), a most popular green plastic, provides a promising alternative to polymers derived from petroleum, and attracts much interest.[1,2,3] Because of its renewability, biodegradability, biocompatibility and competitive physical properties, PLA has been applied in biomedical materials, packaging, and the automotive industry. The miscibility, thermal and crystallization behaviors, mechanical properties, processability and cytocompatibility of PLA/CD blends are analyzed and investigated in detail. Dynamic mechanical thermal analysis (DMTA) was performed on a dynamic mechanical analyzer (PE Instruments) in tensile mode at 1 Hz and at a heating rate of 3 C minÀ1 from À100 C to 150 C. The TGA measurements were carried out from 40 to 600 C at a heating rate of 20 C minÀ1 under N2. The tensile properties of the PLA/CD blends were tested by using a RGL-3UA tensile testing machine according to ASTM D638 at a crosshead speed of 10 mm minÀ1. Samples were exposed to Co60 for 15 min and incubated in Dulbecco's modi ed Eagle's medium (DMEM) at the ratio of 3 cm[2] mLÀ1 for 24 h at 37 C. The morphology of the cells a er incubation for 3 days was observed using an inverted phase contrast microscope before the MTT testing
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