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UV curing was introduced via a chemical treatment by adding small amounts of a hexafunctional acrylic monomer and a photoinitiator to improve the mechanical properties of PLA. This study also employed a semi-interpenetrated structured polymer network through the process of UV-curing. The UV curing be-haviors were investigated using FTIR-ATR spectroscopy and gel fraction determination. Also, the tensile strength was investigated with different hexafunctional acrylic monomer contents and UV doses. The re-sults showed that the crosslinking of UV-induced chemically treated PLA started at a low content of hex-afunctional acrylic monomer, resulting in a significant improvement of the mechanical properties compared to those of neat PLA due to crosslinking. Keywords : polylactic acid (PLA), UV curing, chemical crosslinking, hexafunctional acrylic monomer, mechanical properties, semi-IPN structure 1. INTRODUCTION Polylactic acid (PLA) has attracted the atten-tion of both industry and research institutions. It is a biopolymer whose properties are com-parable to those of commercial plastics such as poly(ethylene terephthalate) (PET)[1]. PLA pro-duction is derived from annually renewable re-sources such as corn starch, cassava starch or sugarcane. PLA exhibits the useful properties of biodegradability, transparency and processability [2-5]. However, its poor heat stability and me-chanical properties limited its applications[6-8]. Many technologies, such as annealing, the addi-tion of nucleating agents[9-12], the formation of composites with fiber or nanoparticles[13-16], chain extensions[17,18] and the introduction of crosslinking structures have been shown to be effective for enhancing the heat stability or me-chanical properties of PLA materials[19]. Photo-induced reactions consist of polymer-ization as introduced by ultra-violet (UV) light, visible light, an electron beam (EB) or a laser.

UV-curing Behaviors and Mechanical Properties of UV-cured Polylactic Acid (PLA)