Surface characterization of poly(lactic acid) and polycaprolactone by inverse gas chromatography

Inverse gas chromatography (IGC) has been used to characterise the surface properties of polycaprolactone (PCL) and poly(lactic acid) (PLA). The dispersive component of the surface free energy (γSD) was found to be very small for both of them—values close to 30 mJ/m2 in the case of the PLA and ca. 40 mJ/m2 for the PCL. The retention times of the n-alkanes, necessary to calculate the dispersive component of the surface energy, were obtained from the maximum, the centre at half height and the centre of mass of the chromatographic peak. While the values obtained using the first two parameters appear not to be affected by the peak asymmetry, in spite of having been obtained above the glass transition temperature of the polymer, the values obtained using the latter have been found to be not reliable. The drawbacks of using n-alkanes with a very small retention time have also been discussed, estimating the error it can introduce in the final results. Finally, the acid–base properties of the two biopolymers were determined using the approaches suggested by Schultz et al. and by St. Flour and Papirer. Although both methods describe the surfaces of PLA and PCL as neutral ones, differences between the values of the parameters KA, KD and SC were obtained.