Management of moisture penetration and hydrolytic degradation of polylactide (PLA) is extremely important during the manufacturing,
shipping, storage, and end-use of PLA products. Moisture transport, crystallization, and degradation, in PLA have been measured
through a variety of experimental techniques including size-exclusion chromatography, differential scanning calorimetry, and
X-ray diffraction. Quartz crystal microbalance and dynamic vapor sorption experiments have also been used to measure moisture
sorption isotherms in PLA films with varying crystallinity. A surprising result is that, within the accuracy of the experiments,
crystalline and amorphous PLA films exhibit identical sorption isotherms.
Index Entries PLA - biodegradable polymers - bio-based polymers - polylactic acid - diffusion - hydrolysis