A green and scalable strategy to fabricate tung oil anhydride/cellulose fiber paper with excellent stability and mechanical properties
摘要
Cellulose fiber (CF) is widely used as a flexible substrate in material science and bio-medical engineering. However, a majority of traditional research focuses solely on overcoming the bottleneck of CF in mechanical properties and improving resistance characteristics attributed to self-defects, ignoring the selection of non-toxic reinforcing agent and green, efficient and scalable production demands. In this work, a clean and scalable strategy, sizing process of waterborne emulsion was proposed for reinforcing CF paper. This innovative approach focused on controlling the insertion of 2D tung oil anhydride (TOA) layer based on the thermoset of TOA in the thermal reaction to form ester bond between cellulose and TOA due to the high chemical activity of TOA. Accordingly, the extensive ester bonds between CF and TOA enhanced cross-linking density and interfacial adhesion between CF, resulting in excellent tensile strength and toughness. Particularly, TOA/CF paper showed a tensile strength of 87.62 MPa, Young's modulus of 2.98 GPa and impact strength of 31.26 kg.f/mm2 when the added content of TOA was 7 wt%. Moreover, the TOA/CF paper exhibited better hydrophobicity (water contact angle of 117° ± 3°) and thermal stability than pure CF paper. The developed TOA/CF paper featuring green and high yield fabrication has promising applications as a flexible substrate in various industries.