Simultaneous Improvement of the Foaming Property and Heat Resistance in Polylactide via One-step Branching Reaction Initiated by Cyclic Organic Peroxide

In this work, the long chain branched Polylactide (LCB-PLA) with free gel is prepared by the introduction of cyclic organic peroxide (COP) into linear PLA (L-PLA) through reactive extrusion. Due to the formation of LCB structures, the melt strength and crystalline properties of PLA are significantly improved, leading to obviously enhanced foaming property and heat resistance. Specifically, with the addition of 0.5 wt.% COP, the strain hardening coefficient (XE) is sharply increased to about 4.8, the nucleation efficiency reaches to 74.5% and the crystallinity is raised by 15 times. Correspondingly, the expansion ratio of foamed LCB-PLA reaches to 50-fold, and the Vicat softening temperature is increased from 60oC to above 150oC after simple annealing treatment. Thus, this study provides a simple and effective strategy to simultaneously improve the foaming performance and heat resistance of PLA, which is of great significance for the PLA industrialization.