Biofriendly Waste Shell Powders/Polylactic Acid Composites for Antibacterial Engineering Applications

With the rapid progress of agriculture and aquaculture, waste shells are harming the environment because of large production, and highly valued recycling is now holding more attention. However, there are still no good ways for simultaneously solving the poor mechanical and antibacterial performance during the recycling process. In this work, antibacterial shell-grafting-Ag powders/polylactic acid (shell-g-Ag/PLA) biocompatible composites, with comparable mechanical properties to industrial polymer counterparts, were prepared via the in situ reduction of Ag ions on surfaces of polydopamine-modified shell powders. The introduction of Ag particles increases the compatibility on the interface and endows the composites with antibacterial performance by inheriting the prominent characteristic from Ag. Without scarifying the mechanical properties by improving the crystallinity and interface, the loaded Ag particles in the composites endowed the composites with valorized antibacterial performance, evidenced by a bacterial inhibition width from 0 to ∼3.29 mm. The biofriendly composites, together with comparable mechanical properties to industrial PLA products, can serve as a sustainable material to be applied in the field of disposable packaging.