Study of crystalline and amorphous phases of biodegradable poly(lactic acid) by advanced thermal analysis

The qualitative and quantitative thermal analysis of biodegradable poly(lactic acid) PLA is presented. The glass transition, melting process, and heat capacity of a semi-crystalline poly(lactic acid) are studied utilizing the differential scanning calorimetry and temperature-modulated DSC. The mobile amorphous fraction, W-a degree of crystallinity, W-c and rigid-amorphous fraction, W-RAF were estimated depending on the thermal history of semi-crystalline PLA. From qualitative thermal analysis, the glass transition of rigid-amorphous phase was observed as a broadening from the changes of heat-flow-rate between mobile glass transition temperature and melting temperature. The amount of the rigid-amorphous fraction (RAF) was evaluated from W-RAF = 1-W-c-W-a and graphically was presented as the result of a deflection from the linearity of the dependence of the change of degree of mobile amorphous phase (W-a) vs. the degree of crystalline fraction (W-c) for semi-crystalline PLA with different thermal history. The degree of crystallinity of semi-crystalline samples of PLA can be discussed in terms of a two- or three-phase model. In contrast, the quantitative thermal analysis of the experimental apparent heat capacity of semi-crystalline PLA did not show any appearance of RAF in the examples of analyzed samples. The experimental heat capacity of PLA was analyzed in reference to the solid and liquid equilibrium heat capacities of poly(lactic acid) found in the ATHAS Data Bank. (C) 2009 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.