Plastic materials have a huge impact to the environment. Not only most of them are thrown away and pollute our ocean, even those eventually sent to a landfill slowly degrade and emit methane, a green house gas.
I aim to tackle the above environmental problems by engineering a family of biodegradable polymers, poly(3-hydroxylhydroxyalkanotes) (PHAs), as potential “green” substitute to the conventional plastics.
In specific, my study tackles the well known weaknesses of PHAs, especially for the most well known member in this family, homopolymer PHB: (1) low melt elasticity, and (2) a narrow thermal processing window. The effects of two polymer modification approaches are investigated: copolymerization and blending. Thermal, mechanical and rheological properties are studied and the composition-processing-structure-property relationships are established.