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Enhancing poly(lactic acid) microcellular foams by formation of distinctive crystalline structures

Yes / By controlling the crystallization behavior of poly(lactic acid) (PLA) in the presence of a hydrazide nucleating agent (HNA), PLA-HNA foams with enhanced microcellular structures were prepared via supercritical CO2 foaming. It was found that HNA can self-assemble into fibrillar networks, inducing the crystallization of PLA on their surface, and "shish-kebab"crystalline structures with high crystallinity formed, which can be maintained during the whole foaming process. Incorporation of HNA promoted the formation of gt conformers, improved the amount of dissolved CO2, hindered the escape of CO2, and increased the viscoelasticity of PLA. Compared with neat PLA foam, for PLA-HNA foam, the average cell diameter decreased obviously, from 64.39 to 6.59 μm, while the cell density increased up to nearly three orders of magnitudes, from 6.82 × 106 to 4.44 × 109 cells/cm3. Moreover, lots of fibrillar structures appeared and entangled with each other on the cell wall of the foam. By forming such dense micropores and enhanced fibrillar structures, PLA foam was highly reinforced with significantly improved compressive strength. / This research was financially supported by National Natural Science Foundation of China (grant no. 51773122) and State Key Laboratory of Polymer Materials Engineering (grant no. sklpme2019-2-21).

Identiferoai:union.ndltd.org:BRADFORD/oai:bradscholars.brad.ac.uk:10454/18317
Date13 January 2021
CreatorsLi, R., Ye, L., Zhao, X., Coates, Philip D., Caton-Rose, Philip D.
Source SetsBradford Scholars
LanguageEnglish
Detected LanguageEnglish
TypeArticle, Accepted manuscript
Rights© 2020 American Chemical Society. This document is the Accepted Manuscript version of a Published Work that appeared in final form in Industrial & Engineering Chemistry Research, copyright © American Chemical Society after peer review and technical editing by the publisher. To access the final edited and published work see https://doi.org/10.1021/acs.iecr.0c00537.

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