One-pot Enzymatic Synthesis of Poly(L,L-lactide) by Immobilized Lipase Catalyst

Abstract

The ring-opening polymerization of L,L-lactide by using immobilized lipase Candida Antarctica (Novozym 435) as a catalyst at a temperature of 100 °C in bulk was conducted. This process was found to yield the corresponding poly(L,L-lactide) (PLLA) with weight-average of molecular weights of about 2,440 and a polydispersity index of 2.63. It was observed that the increase of the reaction time and amount of enzyme catalyst resulted in the polylactides with higher molecular weights.