CONICET | Buscador de Institutos y Recursos Humanos

Poly(lactic acid) (PLA), a main commercially available bio-based and compostable polyester, is produced by the monomeric synthesis of lactic acid and derived from renewable resources such as corn, cassava, or sugar. PLA has gained increasingly market presence in the medical, packaging and agriculture industries due to growing consumers? environmental awareness and competitive prices. However, PLA?s brittleness behaviour along with its poor gas barrier performance hinders its wide market applications. So, it is important to tailor PLA?s properties to fulfil end-user demands. One approach to produce new opportunities toward ?greener? and `sustainable` polymeric structures is the addition of nanoparticles such as nanoclays, nanotubes and graphene. Graphene (GRH) has increasingly gained attention due to its fascinating material properties such as high Young´s modulus (1000 GPa) and specific surface area (calculated value, ~2630 m2 g-1). A limited number of studies have so far addressed the potential impact of PLA/GRH nanocomposites. The main objective of this work was to investigate the behaviour of GRH and modified GRH at low concentration within PLA matrix to improve its mechanical and barrier properties.PLA nanocomposite films loaded with very low amount of GRH demonstrated improved mechanical properties, yet with impaired and/or unimproved oxygen and water vapour barrier performance. The development of these novel PLA/GRH nanocomposites can open an opportunity for creating tougher PLA films. Further work is being conducted to improve PLA/GRH barrier properties, so that nanocomposite films could be developed for a wide range of applications including food and medical packaging.