Polylactic acid/UV-crosslinked in-situ ethylene-propylene-diene terpolymer nanofibril composites with outstanding mechanical and foaming performance

Polylactic acid (PLA) is a promising biomass and biodegradable polymer but suffers from its brittle feature and poor foaming ability. Thus, many ductile polymers have been used to modify PLA through compounding. Although some of them can improve the toughness, the strength and rigidness of PLA are seriously scarified due to the large dosage, poor dispersion, and see-island structures. Herein, UV-crosslinking-assisted in-situ fibrillation was developed to fabricate ethylene-propylene-diene terpolymer (EPDM) nanofibril-reinforced PLA composites. Twin-screw compounding followed by melt blowing was used to stretch EPDM phase into nanofibrils, while UV-crosslinking was proposed to stabilize the EPDM nanofibrils in the final PLA/EPDM composites. Thanks to UV-crosslinking, EPDM nanofibrils with an average diameter of 94.3 nm were achieved in PLA. Due to the heterogeneous nucleating effect of UV-crosslinked EPDM nanofibrils, the crystallization rate of PLA was significantly enhanced, and refined crystal morphology with fibrous structures was obtained. Surprisingly, merely 3 wt% of UV-crosslinked EPDM nanofibrils remarkably enhanced the mechanical properties of PLA. The tensile toughness and impact strength were increased by 620% and 440%, respectively, without sacrificing strength and rigidness. Moreover, the UV-crosslinked EPDM nanofibrils also significantly improved the foaming ability of PLA. The PLA/UV-crosslinked EPDM foam with an expansion ratio of up to 28-fold was achieved for the first time by mold-opening microcellular injection molding. With the presence of UV-crosslinked EPDM nanofibrils, the expansion ratio and cell population density of the foams can be increased by 470% and 5 orders of magnitude, respectively. Owing to the super-high expansion ratio and unique micro/nanoscale structures on cell walls, the 28-fold expanded PLA/EPDM foam exhibited outstanding thermally insulating performance with a thermal conductivity of as low as 26.3 mW/m∙K.