Recent advances in starch, polyvinyl alcohol based polymer blends, nanocomposites and their biodegradability

Recent environmental regulations, societal concerns and growing environmental understanding throughout the world have triggered renewed efforts in plastic industry to develop new products and processes compatible with our environment. This review outlines the new developments in thermoplastic starch, polyvinyl alcohol based blends and nanocomposites. These materials show a broad and versatile range of physical properties and other advantageous characteristics at acceptable cost and biodegradation rate and can be employed in a wide range of applications. To further improve their properties (such as mechanical properties, moisture sensitivity), some physical or chemical methods such as cross-linking, incorporation of new nanoparticles can be applied. With these new techniques, materials with a great variety of property profiles could be realized and they were even able to compete, both in price and in performance, with synthetic polymeric materials in different applications. (C) 2011 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.