TY - JOUR AU - Sanglard, Pauline AU - Adamo, Vincent AU - Bourgeois, J.-Pascal AU - Chappuis, Thierry AU - Vanoli, Ennio PY - 2012/12/19 Y2 - 2024/03/29 TI - Poly(lactic acid) Synthesis and Characterization: FH - HES JF - CHIMIA JA - Chimia VL - 66 IS - 12 SE - Columns, Conference Reports DO - 10.2533/chimia.2012.951 UR - https://www.chimia.ch/chimia/article/view/2012_951 SP - 951 AB - Poly(lactic acid) (PLA) is a promising biodegradable polymer based on renewable resources. This paper describes scale-up studies to synthesize high molecular weight PLA (>100'000 g/mol) in five steps from commercial lactic acid. The first four steps of this process consist of synthesizing a highly pure precursor, lactide, which can be converted into a high molecular PLA by ring opening polymerization (ROP). We produced PLA with a molecular weight of 109'000 g/mol using this strategy. ER -