Lignin is a natural polymer and an agricultural byproduct of biorefinery industries. Lignin is the second largest renewable material on earth after cellulose. There are 50-70 million tons of lignin produced globally every year. However, lignin is underutilized and mostly burnt to generate electricity and heat. Our research valorizes this low-cost biobased feedstock to produce value-added materials. We use intrinsic chemistry and three-dimensional molecular characteristics of lignin to create both covalent and non-covalent dynamic structures to produce the materials having excellent thermo-responsive properties. We utilize molecular dynamics to manipulate thermally adaptive mechanical strength of the materials for a wide range of applications. In this talk, I will discuss the uses of advanced characterization techniques, including in-situ rheology, neutron and X-ray scattering to discover the fundamentals of these dynamic structures.

Transformation of an agricultural byproduct to thermally adaptive materials

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