Publication: Mechanical, rheological, migration and antifungal properties of triacetin plasticized polylactic acid/ethylene vinyl acetate blend
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Date
2022-08-01
Authors
Johar, Munirah
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Abstract
The intense interest in biodegradable polymer, polylactic acid (PLA) has attracted much attention to solve the low toughness issues and migration of plasticizers from the PLA. This research aims to investigate the effect of the presence of polyethylene-co-vinyl acetate (EVA) as the second component in PLA blend and triacetin (TRI) as a plasticizer by melt blending in an internal mixer at 170°C. The mechanical, thermal, migration kinetic and antifungal ability properties of the plasticized PLA/EVA were studied. PLA blended with 15% EVA (PLA85/EVA15) can be considered as the best composition with the impact strength of 37.80 KJ/m² and the highest elongation at break of 9.58% due to the compatibility between components. The addition of different amounts of TRI into the PLA85/EVA15 showed the formation of highly plasticized and less plasticized PLA regions with 25%TRI. In the presence of 15%TRI, tensile strength reduced to 21.28 MPa while elongation at break increased up to 280% compared with the unplasticized blend. The migration rates of the TRI from plasticized PLA/EVA blend increased with increasing TRI content but a lower migration rate was observed in blend compared with pure PLA at a similar weight percent of TRI based on the amount PLA could be due to the better interaction in the presence of EVA. Antifungal tests against Aspergillus sp., Penicillium sp, and Fusarium sp revealed antifungal ability improvement with increasing amount TRI in the PLA/EVA blend due to the ability of TRI in inhibiting the growth of fungi for biological safety application.