Environmental issues concerning petroleum-based polymers have begun a growing emphasis to utilize sustainable poly(lactic acid) (PLA) based packaging. However, PLA has its own limitations such as brittleness, high gas permeabilities and slow crystallization rate. With the aim to alleviate these limitations, we made a maiden effort to use a food additive, sucrose palmitate (SP) as eco-friendly filler for fabrication of PLA based bionanocomposites. FTIR analysis elucidated the presence of hydrogen bonding and intermolecular interaction between PLA and reinforcement. Ordered orientation of the SP in the PLA matrix visualized by TEM analysis revealed uniform dispersion of SP filler into PLA matrix. DSC and XRD results confirmed that the incorporated bio-filler acted as a nucleating agent and thus partially contributed towards the crystallinity of PLA-SP bionanocomposites. Enhancement in the tensile strength and elongation at break up to 83 and 56% respectively is obtained. The best positive influence for the oxygen barrier was confirmed for the PLA-SP bionanocomposite film where the reduction in oxygen permeability by 69% is achieved in comparison to pure PLA. V C 2014 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. J. Appl. Polym. Sci. 2015, 132, 41320.
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