A new biodegradable blends prepared from polylactide and hyaluronic acid

In this article, the biodegradable polylactide/hyaluronic acid (PLA/HA) composites were prepared by a melt blending method. In addition, the acrylic acid grafted polylactide (PLA-g-AA) was studied as an alternative to PLA. The samples were characterized by a fourier transform infrared (FTIR) spectroscopy, a nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR), a differential scanning calorimetry (DSC), an Instron mechanical tester, and a scanning electron microscopy (SEM). As the result, due to the poor compatibility between PLA and HA, the mechanical properties of PLA/HA composites were worse than PLA. Much better dispersion and homogeneity of HA in the polymer matrix could be obtained when PLA-g-AA was used in place of PLA in the composite. The PLA-g-AA/HA composites could obviously improve the mechanical properties of PLA/HA ones, and the former provided a plateau tensile strength at break when the HA content was up to 20 wt%. Furthermore, the PLA-g-AA/HA was more easily processed than the PLA/HA because the former had lower viscosity than the latter, as they were molten. Biodegradation tests of blends were also studied under the enzymatic environment, and the result showed that the mass of blends reduced by about the HA content within 4 weeks.