Abstract
The present work demonstrates the thermal degradation behavior of polylactic acid (PLA) and oligo‐(lactic acid)‐grafted‐gum arabic (LA‐g‐GA) based bionanocomposite films. The LA‐g‐GA was prepared by polycondensation of lactic acid in the presence of gum arabic, and proved to be a unique biobased filler. The thermal degradation of PLA was found to be a single‐step process. Thermogravimetric Analysis hyphenated to Fourier Transform Infrared Spectroscopy. (TGA‐FTIR) was conducted to study the evolved gaseous products from PLA and PLA/LA‐g‐GA samples, for interpreting the degradation pathways. The detailed investigation about thermal degradation kinetics of PLA and PLA/LA‐g‐GA bionanocomposite films were performed using isoconversional models (Augis & Benett, Flynn‐wall‐ozawa and Kissinger‐Akhira‐Sunose) and model fitting method (Kissinger). Activation energies obtained by F‐W‐O and K‐A‐S models have been found to be in good agreement with Kissinger model as compared to Augis & Bennett model. The activation energies of neat PLA films were determined from Kissinger, Augis & Bennett, F‐W‐O and K‐A‐S models, and were found to be 254, 259, 257, and 260 kJ mol−1, respectively. For the composite films, it was observed that the activation energy of degradation is dependent on its conversion. POLYM. ENG. SCI., 57:1193–1206, 2017. © 2017 Society of Plastics Engineers
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