Synthesis and Characterization of Cellulose Diacetate-Graft-Polylactide via Solvent-Free Melt Ring-Opening Graft Copolymerization

Cellulose diacetate (CDA) and L-lactide (L-LA) were used to prepare CDA−g−PLLA with a low glass transition temperature under different process conditions. Given the high glass transition temperature (Tg) of CDA, the thermal processing performance of CDA is poor, which greatly limits its application fields. To decrease the Tg of CDA, graft copolymerization was used in this research. A CDA−g−PLLA graft copolymer was synthesized by grafting CDA with L-LA under different reaction conditions using stannous octanoate as the catalyst and variations in the grafting rate under different reaction conditions were compared. The chemical structure and crystal structure of the CDA−g−PLLA were investigated, and thermal properties were also studied. The results showed that the grafting rate was the highest at the L-LA/CDA mass ratio of 4:1 under a reaction temperature of 150 °C for 90 min, and no poly-L-lactide (PLLA) homopolymer was found among the CDA−g−PLLA graft copolymers after purification. The Tg of CDA−g−PLLA was 54.2 °C, and the initial temperature of weightlessness of CDA−g−PLLA was 218.7 °C. The regularity of the original CDA molecular chains was destroyed after grafting PLLA molecular chains. In this research, we investigated the optimal grafting conditions for CDA−g−PLLA and the CDA−g−PLLA had a low Tg, which improves the thermal processing performance of CDA and broadens its application prospects in the industry.