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A Facile and Eco-friendly Route to Fabricate PolyLactic Acid Scaffolds with Graded Pore Size
Published on: October 17, 2016
Pickering emulsion process assisted construction of regenerated chitin reinforced poly (lactic acid) blends
François Xavier Munyazesa1, Yunchong Zhang1, Bijia Wang1
1Key Lab of Science and Technology of Eco-Textile, Ministry of Education, College of Chemistry, Chemical Engineering and Biotechnology, Donghua University, Shanghai 201620, People's Republic of China.
Abstract:
Regenerated chitin (RCh)/poly (lactic acid) (PLA) blends with enhanced properties were successfully prepared via the Pickering emulsion approach. An oil-in-water Pickering emulsion of PLA/dichloromethane (DCM) stabilized with RCh via an ultrasonic homogenizer was formed. A uniformly dispersed blends were obtained upon slow volatilization of DCM. The effects of RCh on physical/morphological, thermal, mechanical and rheology properties of the blends were studied. The introduction of RCh in PLA improved its crystallinity from 23.4% to over 38.0%. The blends displayed an improvement in storage modulus of 393% at 70 °C for 2 wt%RCh as compared with neat PLA. The RCh/PLA blends showed an enhancement in both tensile strength and elongation at break of 18% and 31% respectively at the loading of 1.5 wt%-RCh. Moreover, the complex viscosity of the blends was increased compared to neat PLA, and all the blends exhibited shear-thinning behaviour without any plateau region at low angular frequencies (ω < 10 rad/s). These results suggest that the low weight content RCh introduced to PLA matrix via this facile Pickering emulsion approach not only promotes nucleation in RCh/PLA blends but also acts as a promising reinforcing agent for PLA.
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