Polylactic acid/zinc oxide biocomposite films for food packaging application

Although PLA is much more expensive than polyolefins, such as PP and PE, there is a great interest to propose PLA based material as alternative films for food packaging being PLA derivable from natural source, compostable and biodegradable. For this purpose the research has the task to investigate and propose PLA materials with enhanced properties to be effectively and efficiently alternative to polyolefin films for food packaging application. In this contribution, biocomposite films of PLA with 1, 3 and 5 wt% of ZnO have been investigated to determine mechanical, barrier and antimicrobial (against Escherichia coli) properties. It is found that the biocomposite films are characterized by a good dispersion of the ZnO particles in PLA matrix, although no previous treatment was performed on ZnO particles, such as silanization, to decrease its incompatibility with the polymer. The biocomposite films have shown good mechanical properties, decrease of permeability to CO2 and O2, and only a slight increase to water vapour. Particularly important is that, for the biocomposite with 5 wt% of ZnO, the % Reduction for E. Coli test reached the value of 99.99 already after 24 h.