Control of the barrier properties of PLA by means of biobased plasma polymer coatings

Biodegradable and derived from renewable resources, polylactide is an alternative to conventional synthetic packaging materials. Nevertheless, as other polymers, PLA presents high water permeability leading to its uncontrolled hydrolysis and subsequently limiting its application fields.
In our work, we use a highly cross-linked PLA-based plasma polymer film synthesized by PECVD as barrier coating. The control of both chemistry and cross-linking would allow tuning the gas permittivity and, finally the degradation rate of the PLA substrate. A thorough study of the plasma-surface interaction is performed to understand and finely control the plasma process.