Biodegradable sandwich-architectured films derived from pea starch and polylactic acid with enhanced shelf-life for fruit preservation

Abstract The development of biopolymer films is crucial for the replacement of conventional plastics. Tremendous effort is made to improve their performances by introducing biopolymers through the film manufacturing process. Herein, a sandwich-architectured film was proposed to efficiently improve the adhesion between the PS and PLA layers by using octenyl succinic anhydride-modified pea starch (OMPS) layer as the interlayer, leading to a highly mechanically enhanced interpenetrating network. Accordingly, the properties of the films were enhanced due to the synergism effect of sandwich architecture. In particular, the WVP value of the sandwich-architectured films (0.25 ∼ 0.89×10-10 g · m - 1 · s - 1 · P a - 1 ) decreased more than 7-fold compared with the OMPS20 film, and the OP value of the sandwich-architectured films (0.256 ∼ 1.229×10-12 c m 3 · m · m - 2 · s - 1 · P a - 1 ) decreased more than 10-fold in comparison to the PLA film. Benefitting from the characteristics investigated above, the films exhibited a favorable effect on strawberry storage. Overall, the fabricated eco-friendly sandwich-architectured films have shown great potential for biodegradable packaging applications.