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. 2022 Apr 11;14(8):1541.
doi: 10.3390/polym14081541.

Partial Biodegradable Blend with High Stability against Biodegradation for Fused Deposition Modeling

Muhammad Harris  1   2 , Hammad Mohsin  3 , Johan Potgieter  1 , Kashif Ishfaq  4 , Richard Archer  5 , Qun Chen  5 , Karnika De Silva  6 , Marie-Joo Le Guen  7 , Russell Wilson  1 , Khalid Mahmood Arif  8
Affiliations

Partial Biodegradable Blend with High Stability against Biodegradation for Fused Deposition Modeling

Muhammad Harris et al. Polymers (Basel). .

Abstract

This research presents a partial biodegradable polymeric blend aimed for large-scale fused deposition modeling (FDM). The literature reports partial biodegradable blends with high contents of fossil fuel-based polymers (>20%) that make them unfriendly to the ecosystem. Furthermore, the reported polymer systems neither present good mechanical strength nor have been investigated in vulnerable environments that results in biodegradation. This research, as a continuity of previous work, presents the stability against biodegradability of a partial biodegradable blend prepared with polylactic acid (PLA) and polypropylene (PP). The blend is designed with intended excess physical interlocking and sufficient chemical grafting, which has only been investigated for thermal and hydrolytic degradation before by the same authors. The research presents, for the first time, ANOVA analysis for the statistical evaluation of endurance against biodegradability. The statistical results are complemented with thermochemical and visual analysis. Fourier transform infrared spectroscopy (FTIR) determines the signs of intermolecular interactions that are further confirmed by differential scanning calorimetry (DSC). The thermochemical interactions observed in FTIR and DSC are validated with thermogravimetric analysis (TGA). Scanning electron microscopy (SEM) is also used as a visual technique to affirm the physical interlocking. It is concluded that the blend exhibits high stability against soil biodegradation in terms of high mechanical strength and high mass retention percentage.

Keywords: 3D printing; additive manufacturing; biodegradation; fused deposition modeling; pellet; polylactic acid; polypropylene.

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Conflict of interest statement

The authors have no conflict of interest.

Figures

Figure 1
Figure 1
Die swelling in extruded filament from pellet printer.
Figure 2
Figure 2
Pellet 3D printer with modifications [39].
Figure 3
Figure 3
Location and orientation of buried samples for soil degradation.
Figure 4
Figure 4
Results for soil degradation: (a) weight retention %, (b) pareto chart, (c) main-effects plots, and (d) ANOVA analysis.
Figure 5
Figure 5
FTIR analysis of the effects of melt blending, 3D printing (non-treated), and 3D printing (treated).
Figure 6
Figure 6
DSC analysis of neat PLA, as-prepared blend pellets, and soil-biodegraded samples.
Figure 7
Figure 7
TGA analysis for physical interlocking and soil biodegradation.
Figure 8
Figure 8
SEM analysis for PLA/PP/PE-g-MAH blend at 171 °C, 25 °C.
See this image and copyright information in PMC

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