Advances in the properties of polylactides based materials: A review

Renewable resource based bioplastics are the next generation of materials, which will play a major role in building of a sustainable bioeconomy. Polylactide, PLA is the most well known renewable resource based biodegradable plastics. The realm of PLA bioplastics is expanding through innovative research methodologies, products, and processes. There is a pressing need to enhance the versatility of PLA bioplastics, so that they can compete with conventional polymers. The inherent brittleness, poor melt strength, low heat deflection temperature (HDT), narrow processing window and low thermal stability of polylactides pose considerable scientific challenges and limit their large-scale applications. Numerous efforts such as copolymerization, plasticization, blending, clay based nanocomposite and fiber reinforced composite fabrication have been attempted to modify the properties of PLA bioplastics. Here, a review article pertaining to the developments in the methods to improve the properties of polylactides is presented. The article is focused on the reviewing the approaches such as copolymerization, plasticization, blending, clay based nanocomposite and fiber reinforced composite fabrication used for enhancing the properties of PLA. The mechanical, thermal, rheological, and morphological properties of PLA based materials are discussed. The article also talks about the structure, deformation mechanism and rheology of the polylactides.