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Effect of thermal annealing on crystal structure and properties of PLLA/PCL blend

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Abstract

As far as we know, to enhance the toughness of poly(L-lactide) (PLLA) without compromising its inherent biodegradability, melt blending PLLA with flexible biodegradable polymers is the most effective and universal method. However, most of research results show a slight improvement in impact toughness due to the amorphous PLLA matrix. In other words, effective impact toughness can be achieved only if PLLA blend is in a highly crystalline state. In this work, blend of PLLA with 20 wt% PCL was prepared and then samples made by injection molding were applied to thermal annealing at different temperatures for 2 h to increase the crystallinity of PLLA matrix. The results show that the crystallinity of PLLA/PCL blend annealing at 80 °C is exceeding 40% and impact strength of the samples increases from 5.92 KJ/m2 of unannealed neat PLLA to 26.81 KJ/m2. At the same time, the thermal properties are also improved by a large margin.

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Acknowledgments

The authors genuinely appreciate the financial supports of the National Natural Science Foundation of China (No. 21627804) and State Key Laboratory of Polymer Materials Engineering (No. sklpme2019-2-18).

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  1. College of Polymer Science and Engineering, State Key Laboratory of Polymer Materials Engineering, Sichuan University, Chengdu, 610065, China

    Jin Chen, Chengji Deng, Rui Hong, Qiang Fu & Jie Zhang

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  1. Jin Chen
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Correspondence to Jie Zhang.

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Chen, J., Deng, C., Hong, R. et al. Effect of thermal annealing on crystal structure and properties of PLLA/PCL blend. J Polym Res 27, 221 (2020). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10965-020-02206-1

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