Organically Modified Layered Silicate Reinforced PLA Nanocomposites

5 Organically Modified Layered Silicate Reinforced PLA Nanocomposites 

According to the study, V-PLA shows a tensile modulus of 3550 MPa and tensile strength of 38 MPa. It is evident that incorporation of organo-clay to the tune of 1 to 5 wt%, results in a consistent increase in the tensile modulus. The tensile modulus of PLA in the nanocomposites increased from 3550 MPa to 4156 and 3966 MPa in the case of PLA/C30B and PLA/C93A nanocomposites respectively, with the increase in nanoclay 

Sample Wt% of Nanoclay Tensile Modulus (MPa) Tensile Strength (MPa) Elongation Break (%) Impact Strength (J/m) 

On the contrary, PLA/OMMT nanocomposites exhibited a tensile strength of 45 Mpa, which shows an increase of 18% as compared to that of the matrix polymer. This indicates that the alkylammonium modification using hexadecyl triethyl ammonium bromide (HTAB) expands the clay galleries of NaMMT to facilitate easy penetration of PLA macromolecules into the interstitial spaces. According to Yoshida et al, in the case 

Width of the WAXD peak, (3 (measured by the full-width at half maximum), is inversely proportional to the coherence length of the scattering entities and therefore reflects the coherence order of the silicate layers. This can be calculated from Scherrer equation as follows  

---