By Weraporn Pivsa

Award  KOTRA and Silver Prize : Korea International Women’s Invention Exposition 2010 (KIWIE  2010)

Electronic parts are conventionally made from non-degradable plastics due to their requirements on high mechanical properties and durable. However, after life time utilization, these products become non-degradable waste and is the cause of environmental problems. Electronic parts productions increase according to global industrial development. Therefore, the needs to develop materials that are environmental friendly to replace the conventional non-degradable materials have been the important issue. We have studied the preparation of biodegradable polymer blends between poly(lactic acid) (PLA) and Poly[(R)-3-hydroxybutyrate-co-(R)-3-hydroxyvalerate] (PHBV) for fabrication of electronic parts using injection molding method. The polymer blends were prepared using twin-screw extruder. The ratios of PLA to PHBV investigated were 80:20, 70:30, 60:40, 50:50, 40:60, 30:70 and 20:80 with screw speed of 30 rpm. The extruder die temperature was varied with 220, 200 and 180 C for compounding conditions. The blends were subjected to physical and mechanical properties analysis such as melt flow index (MFI), morphology investigation using scanning electronic microscopy (SEM), impact strength, tensile strength and thermal properties using differential scanning calorimeter (DSC). The characterization results can be applied to the electronic parts industrial application.

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