Sustainable Polylactide-Based Blends (Materials Today) - Softcover

Über die Autorinnen und Autoren

Professor Suprakas Sinha Ray is a Chief Research Scientist and Manager of the Centre for Nanostructures and Advanced Materials, and Director of the DSTI-CSIR Nanotechnology Innovation Centre, Council for Scientific and Industrial Research, Pretoria, South Africa. He received his PhD degree in Physical Chemistry at the University of Calcutta, India, in 2001, and was a recipient of the ‘‘Sir P. C Ray Research Award’’ for the best PhD work. Prof. Ray’s current research focuses on the applications of advanced nanostructured & polymeric materials. He is one of the most active and highly cited authors (h-index of 99) in the field of polymer nanocomposite materials, and he has recently been ranked by Thomson Reuters among the Top 1% most impactful and influential scientists and among the top 50 high-impact chemists.

He has delivered more than 77 plenary/keynote/invited presentations at international conferences and has organised or co-organised several events. He authored 16 books, co-authored 13 edited books, wrote 65 book chapters on various aspects of polymer-based nano-structured materials and their applications, and published 687 articles in high-impact international journals. His work also includes 14 articles in peer-reviewed international conference proceedings and 30 articles in national and international conference proceedings. Additionally, he holds nine patents (registered or pending) and has developed 13 new technologies, which he has shared with colleagues, collaborators, and industry partners. His team has commercialised several products and supported SMMEs. Over the past 19 years, he has mentored 27 postdoctoral fellows and supervised 48 PhD and 17 Master’s students. In 2016, he was honored with South Africa’s most prestigious NSTF Award.

Dr. Ritima Banerjee completed her Masters in Polymer Science and Technology at the Indian Institute of Technology, Delhi (IITD), India. After working in the polymer industry (GE Plastics and SABIC) for 7 years, she returned to academia. She taught in Delhi Technological University for two years and subsequently completed her PhD from the Department of Materials Science and Engineering, IITD, the area of her work being microcellular processing of thermoplastic elastomer based blends and nanocomposites. She is presently a faculty member in the Department of Chemical Engineering in Calcutta Institute of Technology, India. Her research interests include microcellular processing and the structure-property-processing relationship of polymeric materials.

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Sustainable Polylactide-Based Blends provides a thorough and critical overview of the state-of-the-art in PLA-based blends, addressing the very latest advances, innovative processing techniques, and fundamental issues that persist in this field, and aims to support future research and industrial application of these materials.

The book begins by presenting the fundamentals of sustainable polymeric materials, polylactide, and polymer blends. This is followed by two chapters that introduce current and upcoming processing technologies, and structure and morphology characterization techniques for PLA and PLA-based blends. The main section of the book then covers in detail the processing, morphology development, and properties of polylactide-based blends, with each chapter examining a different material blend. The final chapters of the book focus on current and future applications, market potential, key challenges, and future outlook for polylactide-based blends.

Throughout the book, theoretical modeling of immiscible polymer blends helps to establish structure-property relationships in various PLA-based polymer blends. With in-depth coverage of fundamentals and processing techniques, the book also aims to support the selection of processing method and the understanding of surface chemistry, in order to achieve improved compatibility between phases. The emphasis on end application and market will help those in industry who want to bring advanced sustainable material-based products into the market.

This book is therefore a valuable resource for researchers, scientists, and advanced students across polymer science, materials science, and engineering, as well as all those working with bio-based materials. In an industrial setting, this is of great interest to engineers, researchers, and R&D professionals interested in developing PLA-based sustainable products for a range of advanced applications.