Abstract
Developing a moisture-stable structural material with high toughness is essential for improving the stability of packaging and building materials. Wood is a pervasive structural material with naturally good mechanical properties. However, insufficient moisture stability and toughness compromises its safety and structural requirements. Herein, we constructed a moisture-stable wood veneer with high toughness by assembling the choline chloride-ethanolamine delignified wood with alkali lignin, followed by hot-pressing to densify the material. Lignin can be assembled into the microchannel of the delignified wood as a filler and binder for reducing molecular transportation and increasing internal bonding. The enhanced tensile strength (582.0 MPa) and strain (3.6%) are accompanied by a significant increase in the toughness to 11.1 MJ/m3, which is 37 times higher than that of natural wood. The excellent mechanical property can be preserved to a large extent after retaining in tropic moisture conditions (38 °C, 90% RH) with retention of 66.2% and 60.8% for tensile strength and toughness, respectively. A stable water contact angle on the surface and limited water adsorption of reconstructed wood indicate a lowered water infiltration velocity, suggesting highly improved moisture stability as needed for structural materials.
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Acknowledgements
We acknowledge the financial support by National Natural Science Foundation of China (Nos. 21908188, 22008206 and 32071706), Natural Science Foundation of Jiangsu Province (Nos. BK20181051 and BK20181052), and Qinglan Project of Jiangsu Province, China. We also acknowledge Zhanhong Wang from the Analysis and Test Center of YCIT for SEM imaging and Zhenqian Lu from School of Textile and Clothing of YCIT for tensile test.
Funding
This work was supported by National Natural Science Foundation of China (No. 21908188, 22008206 & 32071706), Natural Science Foundation of Jiangsu Province (Nos. BK20181051 and BK20181052), and Qinglan Project of Jiangsu Province, China.
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All authors contributed to the study conception and design. Material preparation, data collection and analysis were performed by GF, NX, ZD, WW. The first draft of the manuscript was written by GF and WW, CZ, XH, JY and SJ commented on previous versions of the manuscript. All authors read and approved the final manuscript.
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Gu, F., Niu, X., Zhang, D. et al. Plant cell wall reconstruction towards enhancing moisture stability and toughness by assembling delignified wood with alkali lignin. Wood Sci Technol (2024). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00226-024-01552-3
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s00226-024-01552-3