Toughening Strategies for Poly(lactic Acid)

Newell Washburn, Biomedical Engineering and Chemistry

Poly(lactic acid) (PLA) is a leading commodity polymer derived from renewable resources. The NatureWorks plant in Blair, NE has a production capacity of 300 million pounds/year but has been running below this because of reduced demand. The reason for the low demand for this material is the intrinsic brittleness of PLA limits its use in a broad range of applications. Blending and filling are two general strategies for improving the properties of polymeric materials, and students involved in this project will explore approaches related to each of these that exploit the miscibility of PLA with other commodity polymers. Student would conduct limited polymer synthesis and focus mostly on developing structure/property relationships for modified PLA. This is applicable to students in Materials Science with some experience in organic and polymer chemistry.