Investigation of poly(l-lactic acid)/graphene oxide composites crystallization and nanopore foaming behaviors via supercritical carbon dioxide low temperature foaming

Poly(lactic acid) (PLA)/graphene oxide (GO) nanocomposites were prepared by solution mixing. Differential scanning calorimetry results indicated that GO was an effective nucleating agent. The size of spherulites decreased, the density of spherulites increased with increasing GO and the crystallinity of PLA increased from 4.34 to 49.01%. For isothermal crystallization, the crystallization rates of PLA/GO nanocomposites were significantly higher than that of neat PLA, in whicht0.5reduced from 9.0 to 2.8. Spindle-like nanopores (about 100–200 nm) that arranged like spherulites were prepared by low temperature foaming. It was found that the crystallization rate increase and spherulite morphology change were insignificant when the content of GO exceeded 0.5 wt%, because the excessive GO increased the number of nucleation sites while restricting the PLA crystal growth. Thus, the arrangement of nanopores did not mimick the spherulites because of imperfect crystal morphology.