Blends of amorphous and crystalline polylactides with poly(methyl methacrylate) and poly(methyl acrylate): a miscibility study

Blends of amorphous and crystalline polylactides (PDLA and PLLA) with poly(methyl methacrylate) (PMMA) and poly(methyl acrylate) (PMA) have been prepared. Thermal behaviour and miscibility of these blends along the entire composition interval were studied by differential scanning calorimetry (d.s.c.). The results were compared with those obtained by dynamic mechanical analysis (DMTA). Only one T-g was found in PDLA/PMA and PDLA/PMMA blends, indicating a high degree of miscibility in both systems. Nevertheless, the PDLA/PMMA blend presented enlargements of the T-g width at high PMMA contents. In this case, additional evidence of complete miscibility was obtained by studying the evolution of the enthalpic recovery peaks which appear after different thermal annealing treatments. When the polylactide used was semicrystalline (PLLA), once the thermal history of the blends had been destroyed, crystallization of PLLA was disturbed in both blends PLLA/PMMA and PLLA/PMA, but in a rather different fashion: in the first case crystallization was almost prevented while in the second one it was favoured. This behaviour was explained in terms of the effect of the higher stiffness as indicated by the value of T-g for PMMA compared to that for PMA. (C) 1998 Elsevier Science Ltd. All rights reserved.