A clean and sustainable route towards the design and fabrication of biodegradable foams by means of supercritical CO2/ethyl lactate solid-state foaming
Abstract
Polymeric foams are essential elements of our life as they are widely used for applications requiring light-weight materials coupled with good mechanical properties and controlled energy and mass transfer. However, foams are often made of petroleum-derivate non degradable materials and manufactured by means of toxic and often hazardous blowing agents. In this work, a clean and sustainable approach to design and fabricate porous biodegradable poly(ε-caprolactone) (PCL) materials via solid-state foaming is investigated. The foaming process was performed by using supercritical mixtures of carbon dioxide (CO2) and