ORIGINAL PAPER Study of Thermo-Mechanical and Morphological Behaviour of Biodegradable PLA/PBAT/Layered Silicate Blend Nanocomposites Aswini Kumar Mohapatra • Smita Mohanty • S. K. Nayak Ó Springer Science+Business Media New York 2014 Abstract Poly (lactic acid) (PLA) and poly (butylene adipate-co-terephthalate) (PBAT) blend nanocomposites were prepared using melt blending technique followed by compression moulding. The blend nanocomposites were prepared with a variation of PBAT loading along with maleic anhydride and benzoyl peroxide ranging from 5 to 20 wt% along with two different commercially available nanoclays cloisite 93A and cloisite 30B (C30B) at 3 wt% loading. The maleic anhydride and benzoyl peroxide were used during the melt blending of the blend nanocomposites as a compatibilizer and as an accelerator respectively. Maleic anhydride used to enhance the compatibility of the PLA/PBAT blend and as well as the uniform adhesion of the nanoclays with them. The properties and characteriza- tions of PLA matrix and the PLA/PBAT blend nanocom- posites have been studied. The tensile strength, % elongation and impact strength increased with the prepa- ration of PLA/PBAT blend nanocomposites as compared with PLA matrix. PLA/PBAT/C30B blend nanocomposites exhibited optimum tensile strength at 15 wt% of PBAT loading. Differential scanning calorimetry and thermo- gravimetric analysis also showed improved thermal prop- erties as compared with virgin PLA. The wide angle X-ray diffraction studies indicated an increase in d-spacing in PLA/PBAT/C30B blend nanocomposite thus revealing intercalated morphology. Keywords PLA  PBAT  Blend nanocomposites and WAXD Introduction In last 10 years, the consumption of biodegradable mate- rials increased 15 times as a new group of products. Now- a-days, Bio-degradable materials are used in specialist industry (tissue engineering), in mass production (packag- ing) and also have been applied as modifiers accelerating decomposition of synthetic polymers in natural environ- ment [1, 2]. Among the biodegradable polymers, aliphatic polyester is one of the most promising biodegradable materials because they are readily susceptible to biological attack [3–5]. Poly (lactic acid) (PLA), a biodegradable aliphatic polyester, produced from renewal resources has received much attention in the research of alternative biodegradable polymers [6, 7]. This PLA polymer is the most popular polymer in the world and may be processed using standard machines, equipments and technologies for classic poly- mers [8–15]. PLA shows good biocompatibility and physical properties, such as high mechanical strength, thermoplasticity and fabricability [16]. PLA inspite of many other favourable advantages such as ease of pro- cessing and wide possibilities of applications (i.e. bio- medical application such as drug delivery systems [17] and controlled release matrices for fertilizers, pesticides and herbicides), has defects, of which the most important are rigidity, brittleness, water sorption and the possibility of degradation during processing. One way to eliminate or reduce those disadvantageous properties is development of new polymer blends with other biodegradable polymers with suitable properties that cannot be used alone. One of such biodegradable polymer is poly (butylenes adipate-co- terephthalate) (PBAT) [18–21]. Poly (butylene adipate-co-terephthalate) (PBAT) (Eco- flex) is a commercially available aliphatic-co-aromatic co- A. K. Mohapatra  S. Mohanty  S. K. Nayak (&) Laboratory for Advanced Research in Polymeric Materials (LARPM), Central Institute of Plastics Engineering and Technology, Bhubaneswar 751024, Orissa, India e-mail: papers.journal@gmail.com; larpmcipet@gmail.com 123 J Polym Environ DOI 10.1007/s10924-014-0639-x