| July 5, 2004 |
Toray Succeeds in Developing World’s First Flexible Poly Lactic Acid Film -- By Control of the Position of Highly Functional component for Nano-Alloy-- |
| Toray Industries, Inc. today announced that
it has succeeded in developing the world's first flexible film made from Poly
Lactic Acid (PLA), a plant-based eco-friendly material, using Toray's own nano-structure
control technology for biaxially oriented films. This film, without losing the
transparency and heat resistance features of PLA, has achieved superior flexibility
levels, meaning it could be used as packaging films such as wrapping films. The
film's environment-friendly feature is expected to spur widespread demand for
the perfectly bio-degradable product in the future. PLA has been gaining attention as an environmentally friendly material that is desirable for the 21st century and commercialization of products such as in fibers, films, sheets and resins has been making progress. However, development of new technologies is required to improve the fundamental qualities such as thermal properties heat resistance, heat shrinkage etc) and mechanical properties (strength, ductility, etc) for its popularization and industrialization so that it can replace the existing products made from multipurpose plastics and highly functional engineering plastics. One of the most important challenges of the new technologies is to “create flexibility.” In the past, a low-molecular-weight liquid plasticizer addition method has been suggested for achieving the commercialization of PLA films. However, the film made with this method was found to be instable against changes in external factors such as temperature and pressure, resulting in the bleeding out of the liquid plasticizer, which in turn would lead to a fatal defect where the film's characteristics such as transparency and flexibility are drastically altered over time. The important feature of the new technology developed by Toray is that it has succeeded in containing the occurrence of bleeding out when faced with changes in temperature or pressure and displays highly stable flexibility while not losing any of the superior features of PLA such as transparency, heat resistance, and perfectly bio-degradable. The following is key points of this technology. 1. Design of highly functional component for nano-alloy Toray designed a highly functional component with perfect bio-degradability that possesses not only highly mobile units that is the key to making PLA flexible but also low mobility units exhibiting strong interaction specifically against PLA polymer that is effective for achieving dispersion at nanometer levels. 2. Control of the position of highly functional component for nano-alloy by high precision biaxially stretching technology Also, high-precision control of the position of highly functional component for nano-alloy in the film was achieved by arranging the PLA nano-crystals in an orderly fashion employing Toray's unique high-precision biaxial stretching technology. The film's flexibility can be significantly improved with such a structure control method, as the low mobility units of the highly functional component are positioned (pinned) on the nano-crystals of PLA while the high mobility units effectively increase the mobility of the non-crystal parts of PLA (mutually interlinked as in a matrix.) This environment-friendly new flexible PLA film is superior in flexibility, transparency, heat resistance and biodegradability. Exploiting these features, Toray plans to widely commercialize this film such as soft packaging materials, films for building materials, electronic devices, and automobiles as well as for industrial material usage such as in process films. With its excellent biodegradable feature, the use of this as a compost-friendly wrap film is expected to make great leaps as an environmentally responsible product for the 21st century. Going forward, Toray is committed to strengthening the development of innovative materials, including next generation PLA films, that are in tune with an earth conscious, recycle-oriented society to create values and markets in response to the new needs of the society. |
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