| Physical and Chemical Properties | Chemical properties polylactic acid (PLA) can be dissolved in acetonitrile, chloroform, dichloromethane, etc., with a melting point of 180 ℃ and a thermal decomposition temperature of 185-200 ℃. |
| Use | Uses for medical sutures. |
The preparation of PLA is based on lactic acid. The lactic acid molecule has two functional groups of hydroxyl and carboxyl groups and has considerable reactivity. It is easy to dehydrate and shrink to synthesize polylactic acid under appropriate reaction conditions. Because lactic acid has optical rotation, polylactic acid also has several kinds of poly-D-lactic acid (P-D-PLA) poly-L-lactic acid (P-L-PLA) and poly-D,L-lactic acid, etc, polylactic acid can generally be synthesized by direct polycondensation of lactic acid or by cationic, anionic, and coordination ring-opening polymerization. Generally speaking, the polylactic acid obtained by direct polycondensation of lactic acid or anionic ring-opening polymerization of lactide has a low molecular weight, so cationic or coordination ring-opening polymerization is required to synthesize polylactic acid with high molecular weight.