The isothermal and non-isothermal crystallization kinetics of pure poly(ε-caprolactone) (PCL) and its blends with L-ascorbic acid (AA) were investigated as a function of composition, crystallization temperature, and heating rate using differential scanning calorimetric (DSC). The PCL/AA networks were prepared using the solution casting method. It is shown to be an immiscible blend where micrometric crystals of AA are floating in the PCL matrix. Low contents of AA are shown to significantly affect the crystallization behaviour of PCL, both isothermal and non-isothermal, by acting as nucleating agents. The isothermal crystallization of PCL/AA blends was modelled using the Avrami equation. The inclusion of AA increased both the Avrami exponent and the crystallization rate of PCL. The non-isothermal crystallization of PCL/AA blends was also fitted to various models (Avrami, Ozawa, combined Avrami-Ozawa, and Friedman). The models were unanimously suggested that the addition of AA, as low as 1 wt%, significantly promotes the crystallization of PCL. The nucleating effect of AA led to faster PCL crystallization at higher temperatures during the non-isothermal cooling process. The addition of a small amount of AA in PCL is expected to boost the biopolymer’s degradation rate and make it suitable for specific biomedical and pharmaceutical applications, i.e. fast drug delivery or bio tissue engineering.

Nucleating effect of L-ascorbic acid in the crystallization behaviour of poly(ε-caprolactone) biopolymer

ACS Spring Meeting 2021

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