In Situ Lignin Adhesion for High-Performance Bamboo Composites

Published

September 7, 2023

Author(s)

Taotao Meng, Yu Ding, Yu Liu, Lin Xu, Yimin Mao, Julia Gelfond, Shuke Li, Zhihan Li, Paul Salipante, Hoon Kim, J. Zhu, Xuejun Pan, Liangbing Hu

Abstract

Bamboo composite is an attractive candidate for structural materials in applications such as construction, the automotive industry, and logistics. However, its development has been hindered due to the use of harmful petroleum-derived synthetic adhesives or low-bonding biobased adhesives. Herein, we report a novel bioadhesion strategy based on in situ lignin bonding that can process natural bamboo into a scalable and high-performance composite. In this process, lignin bonds the cellulose fibrils into a strong network via a superstrong adhesive interface formed by hydrogen bonding and nanoscale entanglement. The resulting in situ glued-bamboo (glubam) composite exhibits a record-high shear strength of ∼4.4 MPa and a tensile strength of ∼300 MPa. This in situ lignin adhesion strategy is facile, highly scalable, and cost-effective, suggesting a promising route for fabricating strong and sustainable structural bamboo composites that sequester carbon and reduce our dependence on petrochemical-based adhesives.

Citation

Nano Letters

Volume

23

Issue

18

Pub Type

Journals

Download Paper

https://doi.org/10.1021/acs.nanolett.3c01497

Local Download

Keywords

bamboo engineering, bamboo composite, biomass adhesive, structural materials, environmental sustainability

Citation

Meng, T. , Ding, Y. , Liu, Y. , Xu, L. , Mao, Y. , Gelfond, J. , Li, S. , Li, Z. , Salipante, P. , Kim, H. , Zhu, J. , Pan, X. and Hu, L. (2023), In Situ Lignin Adhesion for High-Performance Bamboo Composites, Nano Letters, [online], https://doi.org/10.1021/acs.nanolett.3c01497, https://tsapps.nist.gov/publication/get_pdf.cfm?pub_id=956760 (Accessed October 11, 2025)