Nanocomposites based on poly(lactic acid) and bacterial cellulose acetylated by an alfa-hydroxyacid catalyzed route

J.A. AVILA RAMÍREZ; M.I. ERREA; P. CERRUTTI; M. L. FORESTI; C. BERNAL

Mar del Plata

Simposio; XVI Simposio Latinoamericano de Polímeros (SLAP 2018)/ XIV Congreso Iberoamericano de Polímeros (CIP 2018); 2018

Poly(lactic acid) (PLA) is a biodegradable aliphaticthermoplastic polyester. In the last years, a number of contributions have dealt with thereinforcement of PLA with nanocelluloses to prepare totally biodegradablenanocomposites1. However, the high surface area and hydrophilicnature of nanocelluloses often leads to poor dispersibility/compatibilityresulting in inefficient compounding with most non polar polymeric matrices2-3. To overcome this problem, inthe present work bacterial cellulose (BC) was surface acetylated using an acetylationprotocol performed in the absence of cosolvents and catalyzed by naturallyoccurring a-hydroxy acids (i.e citric acid). Subsequently, the surface acetylated BCwith varying derivatization extents (Degree Substitution (DS) 0.25-0.43-0.61) wasused as reinforcement of PLA for the first time.