Development of flexible materials based on plasticized electrospun PLA–PHB blends: Structural, thermal, mechanical and disintegration properties

• Biodegradable PLA–PHB electrospun mats were successfully developed.
• PHB enhanced the crystallinity of PLA–PHB electrospun mats.
• ATBC improved the thermal stability and disintegration in compost of PLA–PHB mats.
• PLA–PHB/ATBC mat showed higher tensile strength and elongation at break than PLA.

In this work flexible PLA–PHB electrospun materials were developed by means of electrospinning technique. The processing parameters to obtain PLA–PHB electrospun fibers in different proportions (100:0; 75:25; 50:50, 25:75 and 0:100) were conditioned. A complete morphological, structural, thermal and mechanical characterization of the developed materials was conducted. The addition of PHB to PLA matrix, reduced considerably the formation of beads. PHB acts as nucleating agent for PLA in PLA–PHB blends. FTIR and Raman studies have showed interactions between PLA–PHB, mainly at proportion 75:25. The influence of the presence of plasticizer was also studied to obtain information on the possibility to use these thin mats as flexible films. Thus, PLA and PLA75–PHB25 electrospun mats were further plasticized with acetyl tri-n-butyl citrate (ATBC), which provoked an increase in elongation at break, achieving the ductility required for flexible films. The ternary system, PLA75–PHB25/ATBC, showed improved thermal stability due to the good interaction among three components. Disintegrability tests under composting conditions confirmed the biodegradable character of all electrospun mat formulations. Also, it was found that PHB slowed down the disintegration, while ATBC speeded it up.

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