A study on ZnO nanoparticles catalyzed ring opening polymerization of L-lactide

Facile synthesis of multifunctional organic/inorganic materials is gaining importance. Present study deals with single step synthesis of PLLA/ZnO nanocomposite by ZnO nanoparticles catalyzed ring opening polymerization of L-lactide. The PLLA/ZnO nanocomposites with different ZnO concentrations were prepared and characterized by FT-IR, XRD, TEM, SEM, DSC, TGA, GPC, 13C NMR and 1H NMR etc. Uniform dispersion of ZnO nanoparticles of size 2–10 nm was achieved without any surface modification of the nanoparticles. The results showed that the as-synthesized PLLA/ZnO nanocomposites possessed thermal properties different from PLLA/ZnO nanocomposites synthesized by other techniques. The synthesized nanocomposite also showed excellent photochemical properties which were analyzed by studying decomposition of methylene blue dye. © 2014, Springer Science+Business Media Dordrecht.