Epitaxial crystallization of polylactic acid on layered zinc phenylphosphonate: Mutual perpendicular rodlike crystals under two lattice matchings

As a highly effective nucleating agent, layered zinc phenylphosphonate (PPZn) is incorporated into polylactic acid (PLA) to investigate the epitaxial crystallization of PLA on PPZn in this study. The corresponding lattice spacing change, crystalline morphology, and crystalline structure are emphasized to reveal the epitaxial crystallization mechanism. As a result, with the increase of PPZn content and the annealing time, the increasing lattice spacing of PPZn and the formation of mutually perpendicular rodlike crystals are observed through x-ray diffraction (XRD) and polarized optical micrograph (POM) measurements, implying that the interlayer spacing of PPZn crystals is expanded as the PLA α-form crystals epitaxially grow on its surface, that is, epitaxial crystallization. To be specific, “edge on” lamellae epitaxial grow on the PPZn crystals along the [010] and [100] directions under two excellent lattice matchings, which possess acceptable mismatching of 0.347% and 7.5%, respectively. With the support of the epitaxial crystallization mechanism, the occurrence of the filamentous structure observed in the fracture morphology of PLA/PPZn composites suggests strong interfacial adhesion between PLA and PPZn, which makes the impact toughness of the PLA/PPZn composites increase by 53.6% compared with pure PLA.