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Hydroplastic polymers as eco-friendly hydrosetting plastics

Nature Sustainability volume 4, pages 877–883 (2021)Cite this article

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Abstract

Despite the considerable benefits plastics have offered, the current approaches to their production, use and disposal are not sustainable and pose a serious threat to the environment and human health. Eco-friendly processing of plastics could form part of the solutions; however, the technological challenge remains thorny. Here, we report a sustainable hydrosetting method for the processing of a hydroplastic polymer—cellulose cinnamate. Synthesized via facile solvent casting, the transparent cellulose cinnamate membranes are mechanically robust, with tensile strength of 92.4 MPa and Young’s modulus of 2.6 GPa, which exceed those of most common plastics. These bio-based planar membranes can be processed into either two-dimensional (2D) or three-dimensional (3D) shapes by using their hydroplastic properties (using water to manipulate the plasticity). These desired shapes maintain stability for >16 months and can be repeatedly reprogrammed into other 2D/3D shapes, substantially extending their lifetime for practical applications.

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Fig. 1: Preparation of hydroplastic CCi membranes.
Fig. 2: Sustainable and highly facile hydrosetting shape-programming of CCi membranes.
Fig. 3: Static mechanical properties of hydroplastic CCi membranes.
Fig. 4: Effect of water on the hydroplastic properties of CCi membranes.

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Data availability

The data supporting the findings are provided within this Article and its Supplementary Information and are available from the corresponding author on reasonable request. Source data are provided with this paper.

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Acknowledgements

K.Z. thanks the German Research Foundation (DFG) and Lower Saxony Ministry of Science and Culture for the project INST186/1281-1/FUGG. J. Wang thanks the Chinese Scholarship Council for the financial support for her PhD study. We thank T. Chen and Q. Tang from Georg-August-University of Göttingen for support in SEM image measurement and calculations. We acknowledge P. Liu, Y. Yang and D. Xu from Georg‐August‐University of Göttingen for valuable suggestions on the figures.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Wood Technology and Wood-based Composites, Georg-August-University of Göttingen, Göttingen, Germany

    Jiaxiu Wang & Kai Zhang

  2. Department of Wood Biology and Wood Products, Georg-August-University of Göttingen, Göttingen, Germany

    Lukas Emmerich

  3. Sino-German Joint Research Lab for Space Biomaterials and Translational Technology, School of Life Sciences, Northwestern Polytechnical University, Xi’an, P. R. China

    Jianfeng Wu

  4. Institute of Physical Chemistry, Georg-August-University of Göttingen, Göttingen, Germany

    Philipp Vana

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  1. Jiaxiu Wang
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  5. Kai Zhang
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Contributions

K.Z. and J. Wang conceived the idea and designed the experiments. K.Z. supervised the project. J. Wang conducted the experiments with the assistance of L.E. and P.V. The data were analysed and processed by J. Wang, J. Wu and K.Z. J. Wang and K.Z. prepared the manuscript and all authors contributed to the revision.

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Correspondence to Kai Zhang.

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The authors declare no competing interests.

Additional information

Peer review information Nature Sustainability thanks Taka-Aki Asoh and the other, anonymous, reviewer(s) for their contribution to the peer review of this work.

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Supplementary information

Supplementary Information

Supplementary Figs. 1–8 and Discussion.

Supplementary Data 1

Raw NMR data.

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Source Data Fig. 3

Statistical source data.

Source Data Fig. 4

Statistical source data.

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Wang, J., Emmerich, L., Wu, J. et al. Hydroplastic polymers as eco-friendly hydrosetting plastics. Nat Sustain 4, 877–883 (2021). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41893-021-00743-1

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