Polylactide (PLA) particles become increasingly important for practical applications as typical sustainable polymeric materials; however, their preparation still remains as a big challenge due to lacking effective preparation method directly starting from monomer lactide (LA) and lactic acid. In this study, we established an unprecedented strategy for preparing PLA particles in a high yield (>90 wt%) precipitation polymerization of LA in ethyl acetate at 0 degrees C. The method provides PLA particles with narrowly distributed size. Phase separation occurred in the course of precipitation polymerization and endowed the PLA particles with interesting porous structures. The particles and their formation process were investigated by SEM, CD, XRD and DSC analyses. Noticeably, the size of PLA particles and the porous structure can be tuned through controlling the crystallization of PLA by adding D-LA in the polymerization system of L-LA. We further explored chiral recognition ability of the PLLA particles. The established strategy provides promising approaches for preparing novel PLA-based materials. (C) 2017 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.