The Blending of Poly(glycolic acid) with Polycaprolactone and Poly(l-lactide): Promising Combinations

Abstract

Poly(glycolic acid) (PGA) holds unique properties, including high gas barrier properties, high tensile strength, high resistance to common organic solvents, high heat distortion temperature, high stiffness, as well as fast biodegradability and compostability. Nevertheless, this polymer has not been exploited at a large scale due to its relatively high production cost. As such, the combination of PGA with other bioplastics on one hand could reduce the material final cost and on the other disclose new properties while maintaining its “green” features. With this in mind, in this work, PGA was combined with two of the most widely applied bioplastics, namely poly(l-lactide) (PLLA) and poycaprolactone (PCL), using the melt blending technique, which is an easily scalable method. FE-SEM measurements demonstrated the formation of PGA domains whose dimensions depended on the polymer matrix and which turned out to decrease by diminishing the PGA content in the mixture. Although there was scarce compatibility between the blend components, interestingly, PGA was found to affect both the thermal properties and the degradation behavior of the polymer matrices. In particular, concerning the latter property, the presence of PGA in the blends turned out to accelerate the hydrolysis process, particularly in the case of the PLLA-based systems.

Living/Controlled Anionic Polymerization of Glycolide in Fluoroalcohols: Toward Sustainable Bioplastics

“…The melting peak is bimodal (209.1 and 218.9 °C) for the second heating–cooling cycle. This is possibly due to the melt-recrystallization phenomena, which is very common in the crystallization of polyesters. , …”

“…This is possibly due to the melt-recrystallization phenomena, which is very common in the crystallization of polyesters. 58,59 The livingness of the ROP of GL catalyzed by organobase t BuP 2 and TU4 in diluted FA was demonstrated by the sequential addition of monomers (chain-extension experiment). The reaction time was prolonged to 15 min to ensure quantitative conversion before adding the same equivalent monomer.…”

A Comprehensive Investigation of the Structural, Thermal, and Biological Properties of Fully Randomized Biomedical Polyesters Synthesized with a Nontoxic Bismuth(III) Catalyst

“…Based on the enthalpy values, the crystalline phase content (crystallinity, X c ) was calculated according to the following Equation (10): where Δ H m is enthalpy of melting, Δ H c is enthalpy of cold crystallization and Δ H mi,100% is enthalpy of melting for a fully (100%) crystalline homopolymer (literature data). The values of 106 J g −1 [ 21 ], 136 J g −1 [ 22 ] and 191 J g −1 [ 23 ] for Δ H m,100% of PLA, PCL and polyglycolide were used respectively. W i is the weight fraction of the Cap, LL and GG co-units in copolymers; for homopolymers, W i = 1.…”

Biomechanical Behaviors and Degradation Properties of Multilayered Polymer Scaffolds: The Phase Space Method for Bile Duct Design and Bioengineering

“…We showed that synthetic scaffolds based on linear polyesters retained 30–50% of their initial strength after 3 months of exposure in a model media simulating the environment of bile ducts [ 54 ]. We hypothesized that a multi-layered design would be beneficial for the creation of a bioengineered equivalent of the bile duct based on polymers with various degradation properties (PCL, PLCL, and PLGA) using an electrospinning technique [ 55 , 56 , 57 ].…”