Insight into the Role of a Isophthalic Dihydrazide Derivative Containing Piperonylic Acid in Poly(L-lactide) Nucleation: Thermal Performances and Mechanical Properties

This work was aimed at synthesizing the N, N -isophthalic bis(piperonylic acid) dihydrazide (PAID) to be as a new crystallization accelerator for poly(L-lactide) (PLLA), and a detailed investigations of the non-isothermal crystallization, melting behavior, thermal decomposition behavior and mechanical properties of PLLA nucleated by PAID were performed applying differential scanning calorimetry (DSC), thermogravimetric analysis (TGA) and electronic tensile tester. The melt-crystallization proved that the PAID could act as a heterogeneous nucleating agent to significantly promote the crystallization in cooling, even the crystallization was still able to be accelerated upon the fast cooling at 50 oC/min. The final melt temperature was another crucial factor for PLLA�s melt crystallization, and when the final melt temperature was 170 oC, the onset crystallization temperature and melt-crystallization enthalpy was almost up to 150 oC and 56.8 J/g upon cooling of 1 oC/min, respectively. Furthermore, the chemical nucleation was proposed to be the nucleation mechanism of PAID for PLLA via the preliminary theoretical calculation. For the cold-crystallization, the addition of PAID exhibited an inhibition for the crystallization of PLLA, but the total crystallization process depended on the heating rate and PAID concentration. The single melting peak after cooling of 1 oC/min indicated that the crystallization had been thoroughly completed in cooling. Additionally, the single melting peak with different locations after full crystallization resulted from the different crystallization temperatures. A comparison in the onset decomposition temperature implied that the presence of PAID only slightly decreased the thermal stability of PLLA. The mechanical testing showed that, in contrast with the elongation at break, the existence of PAID enhanced the tensile strength of PLLA.