Ever-increasing environmental issues and continuous depletion of fossil fuel reserves demand an emerging quest for lightweight materials with superior mechanical properties and economic production from sustainable resources. Natural cellulose, in the form of wood, paper, and clothing, has long been used by human being for thousands of years as engineering materials for building, tools, furnish, and textiles. However, its mechanical properties fail to fulfill the rising needs of modern society for high performance materials that are currently dominated by nonrenewable materials, for example, glass, metal, and plastics. We demonstrate super strong yet lightweight anisotropic cellulose-based films from wood by a strategy of protecting the degree of polymerization (DP) of cellulose, which not only exhibited a tensile strength as high as 1.13 GPa, but also reached a record high specific strength of 820 MPa g−1 cm3. To the best of our knowledge, these are the highest mechanical properties reported so far for any known natural polymers and some strong metals (such as aluminum, cast iron, carbon steel, Mg2Zn, monel, and GrNbTiVZr). Besides, the underlying mechanism for the exceptional mechanical properties of the resulting cellulose-based film is investigated in detail. Such superior mechanical properties enable the lightweight cellulose-based films to use in novel areas where are traditionally dominated by nonrenewable materials such as plastics, glass, and metals. Meanwhile, this work will give a crucial clue to design novel strong and lightweight materials. 

Super strong anisotropic cellulose-based films from wood by a cellulose DP protection strategy

Macromolecular Chemistry: The Second Century

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ACS Spring 2020 National Meeting & Expo

The official archive and repository for all ACS Meetings & Expositions abstracts and select posters or presentations.