Performance of Zinc Oxide Nanoparticles as Polymerization Initiating Systems in the Microwave-Assisted Synthesis of Poly(D,L-Lactide)/ZnO Nanocomposites

Poly(D,L-lactide) (PLA) is a biodegradable polymer widely used in medical applications, whose properties can be diversified by the incorporation of multifunctional nanoparticles. In this report, the microwave-assisted ring-opening polymerization of D,L-lactide in the presence of ZnO nanoparticles was conducted to produce ZnO-graft-PLA nanocomposites. A comparative kinetic study of polymerization processes in mono-modal and multi-modal microwave reactors was addressed. Thanks to spectroscopic, thermal, and microscopic characterizations, the simultaneous formation of free PLA chains and grafted ones on ZnO nanoparticle surface was demonstrated, and the resulting products were carefully analyzed.