Premium
Zinc oxide nanoparticles catalyze rapid hydrolysis of poly(lactic acid) at low temperatures
Author(s) -
Qu Meng,
Tu Huilin,
Amarante Miranda,
Song YiQiao,
Zhu S. Sherry
Publication year - 2014
Publication title -
journal of applied polymer science
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.575
H-Index - 166
eISSN - 1097-4628
pISSN - 0021-8995
DOI - 10.1002/app.40287
Subject(s) - hydrolysis , lactic acid , nanoparticle , polymer , materials science , zinc , chemical engineering , glass transition , activation energy , catalysis , degradation (telecommunications) , kinetics , polymer chemistry , chemistry , organic chemistry , nanotechnology , telecommunications , genetics , physics , quantum mechanics , bacteria , computer science , engineering , biology
Poly(lactic acid) (PLA), a biobased, degradable polymer has been used recently in the field of oil and gas. These applications require rapid hydrolytic degradation of PLA especially at low temperatures. This work reports a simple and ready‐to‐scale up chemistry of using zinc oxide nanoparticles (ZnO NPs) to catalyze the hydrolytic degradation of PLA at the temperatures well below its glass transition temperature. Furthermore, for the first time, we have applied the nondestructive analytical method of 1 H T 2 NMR relaxometry to measure the apparent rate constants of PLA hydrolysis in solid, heterogeneous/composite systems that have multiple and complex reaction kinetics. We demonstrate that the activation energy for ZnO catalyzed PLA hydrolysis is about 38% lower than that of pure PLA hydrolysis. © 2013 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. J. Appl. Polym. Sci. 2014 , 131 , 40287.