Effect of polylactide molecular weight on cellulose nanocrystal dispersion quality

Abstract

Today, plastics are materials that are frequently used for all sectors, especially as a part of daily life, and their consumption is increasing rapidly with a continuous increase, and these materials are often obtained from petroleum-derived fossil resources. The demand for plastic materials is increasing due to reasons such as the excessive use of plastics, the increasing population, the desire of the society to reach higher quality products, and the increase in standards. Especially with the covid 19 pandemic, rapid consumption has inflated this demand. As the usage increased, plastic pollution increased rapidly and studies have been carried out on this subject due to the limited fossil resources. Instead of these petroleum-derived polymers, biodegradable polymers have come to the fore. At this point, one of the the most ideal candidate is the polylactic acid (PLA) polymer since the physical and mechanical properties of PLA are comparable to some petroleum-derived polymers used in the industry. However in spite of all these good and superior features of PLA, it has some shortcomings too such as low viscoelastic properties, slow crystallization rate, brittleness, low thermal stability. For this reason, improving these drawbacks are the main problems that must be overcome in order to use them instead of petroleum-derived polymers. Various studies are carried out in the literature. Copolymerizing using different monomers in the polymerization stage, blending with different polymers without changing their biodegradability, strengthening with micro or nano additives are the methods frequently applied by researchers in the literature. In this study, it was tried to improve the rheological properties of PLA by using a nano additive, and at the same time, how the concept of molecular weight affects the dispersion of this nano additive was investigated. Cellulose Nanocrystals (CNC), which has become popular recently and can improve both the rheological and morphological properties of PLA without affecting its biodegradability, have been used as nanoadditives. CNCs are biopolymers with only crystalline regions after hydrolysis of the amorphous regions in the structure produced from cellulose with acids. Considering its chemical structure, it shows hydrophilic properties because it contains plenty of oxygen and hydroxyl groups. PLA, on the other hand, is a hydrophobic polymer in the ester structure, consisting of long carbon-hydrogen chains and without hydroxyl molecules in its structure. Therefore, they are incompatible with CNC due to their characteristics and their interaction is too weak. In PLA/CNC nanocomposites produced by the melt mixing method, which is the most preferred in the industry, bad results were obtained due to this incompatibility between matrix and the CNC. Thus, nanocomposites with the expected good properties could not be achieved. In order to increase the interactions of CNC and PLA, interface development was achieved by using surface modifiers and the properties of the nanocomposite improved positively. However, nanocomposites produced by the melt mixing method are also very sensitive to high heat due to the ester structure of PLA and can be easily degraded. For this reason, solvent casting is the method used both to avoid this degradation and to produce PLA/CNC nanocomposite without using any surface modifying chemicals. By choosing a suitable solvent that can dissolve both phases, it is possible to better disperse the hydrophilic CNC in the hydrophobic polymer matrix and achieve better results. The solvent chosen for this study is Dimethyl Sulfoxide. Studies in the literature have reported that it disperses CNC better in PLA matrix than solvents such as THF and DMF. In the literatue percolation threshold values were obtained generally between 0.12% - 3%. Based on these results, 0.5% -1% CNC amounts were selected to examine for this thesis. It was also investigated how CNCs would disperse in three different types of PLA: high molecular weight PLA2500HP, medium molecular weight PLA 3001D, and low molecular weight PLA3251D. The mutual point of these polymers is that all of them are semi-crystalline structure leading better results in CNC containing composites compared to amorphous PLAs according to studies and findings in the literature. Within this context, this thesis searches the effect of PLA's molecular weight on the dispersion level of PLA/CNC nanocomposites through the matrix and network formation which is the main stone to get maximized reinforcing effect. When the preparation method was examined, first of all, CNCs were mixed in DMSO solvent for 2 hours in a water bath mixer, so that the CNCs were thoroughly dispersed. Afterwards, PLA granules were added to the prepared DMSO-CNC mixture and the magnetic stirrer was mixed for 4 hours at 90C. The mixtures were poured into petri dishes and kept at room temperature for 2 days, then dried as a film in an oven under vacuum at 85oC for 5 days. Afterwards, the nanocomposites, which were pulverized with the help of a grinder, were kept under vacuum in an oven for 2 more days. In the light of rheology measurements, viscoelastic properties of all molecular weight PLAs improved dramatically with the addition of 1% CNC. The shear thinning behavior of PLA improved with the increase of the complex viscosity. At the same time, this increase can be interpreted that the CNC is well dispersed in the polymer matrix and a network structure is formed with each other. The viscous-like character of unadulterated PLA has turned into an elastic -like material. This significant increase in the storage module with the 1% CNC additive corresponds to the percolation threshold amount, which is the minimum amount required to improve the rheological properties of PLA . In the studies conducted in the literature, these increases are experienced after the CNC is well dispersed and networked in the PLA matrix. On the other hand, 0.5% CNC amount did not give good results for medium and high molecular weight PLA. The reason for this is that because the CNC is not well dispersed in these structures, no network structure can be formed and the viscoelastic properties cannot change. CNCs, which could not enter the longer chains of medium and high molecular weight PLAs, interacted with each other and acted as a foreign substance in the polymer matrix, thus reducing the usual properties. In low molecular weight PLA, on the other hand, it can be interpreted that viscoelastic properties can still improve and this improvement occurs because CNC can more easily disperse between short PLA chains. Similar results were observed for other rheological results. Considering the apparent yield stress of PLA nanocomposites, those containing only 1% CNC showed yield stress, which is in line with the results obtained in other graphs. TGA results showed that the thermal stability was mostly affected with the medium molecular weight PLA. As the CNC amount increased, the degradation temperature of high and low molecular weight PLAs improved by 11oC and 4oC, respectively. No significant change was observed for medium molecular weight PLA. Non-isothermal DSC results showed that the presence of CNC has remarkable effect on the crystallization of PLA. Especially in medium molecular weight PLA, the presence of CNC decreased the cold crystallization temperatures. In high molecular weight PLA, 1% CNC decreased the melting temperature, while it increased the melting temperature in medium molecular weight. No significant difference was observed in low molecular weight PLA.