The basic principle of a physical foaming process on polymer is to dissolve a blowing agent (typically a gas) into a polymer matrix and then reduce the solubility of the blowing agent by thermodynamic instabilities, usually a temperature increase or a pressure decrease, to induce the nucleation. After nucleation, the bubble growth starts, which is mainly controlled by the temperature. The foam cells are finally vitrified when the temperature is reduced, usually below the glass-transition temperature of the polymer matrix.13 In this study, the physical foaming (batch process) was conducted in a high-pressure stainless-steel autoclave made by HiP (Erie, PA). PLA and PLA nanocomposites, in the form of pellets or a compression-molded plaque, were dried, weighed, and placed on the sample holder inside the autoclave. The flowing agent used in this study was a compressed mix of gases CO2 and N2 (20:80) (Aligal® 12 by Air Liquide, Italy). Before a typical experiment, the autoclave was flushed with flowing agent for a few seconds and then pressurized with flowing agent to the desired saturation pressure and heated to the foaming temperature (∼110 °C). The pressure and temperature signals were monitored using a pressure transducer and a thermocouple, respectively, mounted inside the autoclave and indicated on a digital display outside the autoclave. The solubilization time, about 4 h, was maintained to ensure equilibrium absorption of blowing agent by the samples and then the pressure was rapidly reduced (about 2 s) to atmosphere pressure. After the pressure releasing, the foams were cooled naturally to room temperature and then carefully removed from the autoclave and kept in a desiccator at room temperature. The cell structure of the resulted foams was analyzed using a LEICA scanning electron microscope (SEM) model S440. The SEM samples were prepared by cryogenically cutting the obtained foam samples and gold sputtering the fractured cross-sections. The average cell size, d, in micron was obtained by measuring the maximum diameter of each cell perpendicular to the skin from SEM micrographs. To determine the cell-size distribution, the size of at least 50 cells in an SEM micrograph was measured. The bulk densities of both prefoamed, ρp, and postfoamed, ρf, samples in g/cm3 were estimated by using the method of buoyancy. The cell densities, Nc, in cells/cm3 are defined in eq