Toughening of Poly(Lactic Acid) by Blending with Poly(Ethylene-co-Octene)

Abstract

Poly (lactic acid) or PLA is one of the most promising biodegradable and bio-based materials commercially available for the manufacturing of environmentally friendly plastic products. Although, PLA has high modulus and biodegradable property, its brittleness and low thermal stability are the disadvantages. Several means have been explored so as to overcome this drawback, i.e. copolymerization, addition of some additives as well as blending with other polymers. The polymer blending technique has attracted the most attention because of its simplicity and economical reason. It was reported that the addition of a polyolefin elastomer e.g. poly (ethylene-co-octene) or POE in PLA matrix can effectively improve its brittleness. The aim of this study is thus to investigate the effect of the amount of POE on mechanical properties of the polymer blends. POE was also modified with glycidyl methacrylate in order to improve the compatibility between the two polymers. The results pointed out that the impact strength of PLA markedly increased while tensile and flexural properties of the blends were slightly lower than that of neat PLA. It was also observed that the tensile and flexural properties were slightly higher when the modified POE was used rather than those with unmodified POE which indicated the improved interfacial compatibility between two polymers.