Abstract
Poly(lactic acid) (PLA) is the most widely produced biobased, biodegradable and biocompatible polyester. Despite many of its properties are similar to those of common petroleum-based polymers, some drawbacks limit its utilization, especially high brittleness and low toughness. To overcome these problems and improve the ductility and the impact resistance, PLA is often blended with other biobased and biodegradable polymers. For this purpose, poly(butylene adipate-co-butylene terephthalate) (PBAT) and poly(butylene succinate-co-butylene adipate) (PBSA) are very advantageous copolymers, because their toughness and elongation at break are complementary to those of PLA. Similar to PLA, both these copolymers are biodegradable and can be produced from annual renewable resources. This literature review aims to collect results on the mechanical, thermal and morphological properties of PLA/PBAT and PLA/PBSA blends, as binary blends with and without addition of coupling agents. The effect of different compatibilizers on the PLA/PBAT and PLA/PBSA blends properties is here elucidated, to highlight how the PLA toughness and ductility can be improved and tuned by using appropriate additives. In addition, the incorporation of solid nanoparticles to the PLA/PBAT and PLA/PBSA blends is discussed in detail, to demonstrate how the nanofillers can act as morphology stabilizers, and so improve the properties of these PLA-based formulations, especially mechanical performance, thermal stability and gas/vapor barrier properties. Key points about the biodegradation of the blends and the nanocomposites are presented, together with current applications of these novel green materials.
Highlights
Introduction iationsBiodegradable and/or biobased polyesters are “green polymers” with huge potential to replace traditional fossil-based polymer materials, and are needed to limit exploitation of fossil resources and global warming, as well as to reduce environmental pollution [1,2]
A number of reviews detailing improvement of Poly(lactic acid) (PLA) properties by blending have been recently published [7,8,9,15,16,17,18,19,20,21,22,23,24,25,26,27,28,29], but none of them deals with blends of PLA with poly(butylene succinate-co-butylene adipate) (PBSA) or poly(butylene adipate-co-butylene terephthalate) (PBAT). Having these blends high potential as novel green materials, we present in this contribution an overview of main literature results on PLA/PBSA and PLA/PBAT blends
The use of peroxide can be rebe regarded an economically balanced strategy to optimize the thermomechanical garded as an as economically balanced strategy to optimize the thermomechanical properproperties of blends, considering that the modification occurs in the ties of PLA/PBAT blends, considering that the modification occurs in the melt by melt usingby a using a low amount of peroxide
Summary
To predict the morphological features, and stiffness with a general trend perfectly fitting the behavior of rubber toughened polymer composition range in which a dual co-continuous phase develops, which was correlated blends. It is well-known that the ductile phase finely dispersed in a plastic/brittle matrix with the the rheological, thermal, and overall mechanical performances. A clear morphology change abydual increasing the content of develops the ratio of volume of components They observed an elongation the droplet to the reaching ratio of their respective shear viscosities (η 1 and η 2 ) at the processing until a co-continuous phase If thewith viscosity (η 1 /η 2 ) isphase higher than the greater ratio ofthan volume fractions, phase separation
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