The Potential of an Itaconic Acid Diester as Environmentally Friendly Plasticizer for Injection‐Molded Polylactide Parts

Abstract This work reports on the use of dibutyl itaconate (DBI) as an environmentally friendly plasticizer for polylactide (PLA) with different proportions of DBI in the 2.5–20 wt% (weight content) range. A co‐rotating twin‐screw extrusion process followed by injection molding is employed for the manufacturing of the samples. The results show that the plasticized PLA formulation with 10 wt% DBI offers the most balanced overall properties, with a noticeable increase in the elongation at break from 4.6% (neat PLA) up to 322%, with a tensile modulus of 1572 MPa, and a tensile strength of 23.8 MPa. In the case of 15 and 20 wt% DBI formulations, PLA reaches the saturation point with no more increase in the elongation at break and a clear decrease in the tensile modulus. DBI also decreases the glass transition temperature ( T g ) from 61.3 °C (neat PLA) down to 23.4 °C for plasticized PLA formulation containing 20 wt% DBI, thus showing the high plasticization efficiency of DBI.