Facile fabrication and characterization of highly stretchable lignin-based hydroxyethyl cellulose self-healing hydrogel

Siqi Huang; Su Shuyi; Haibo Gan; Wu Linjun; Chaohui Lin; Xu Danyuan; Haifeng Zhou; Xuliang Lin; Yanlin Qin

doi:10.1016/j.carbpol.2019.115080

Facile fabrication and characterization of highly stretchable lignin-based hydroxyethyl cellulose self-healing hydrogel

Carbohydr Polym. 2019 Nov 1:223:115080. doi: 10.1016/j.carbpol.2019.115080. Epub 2019 Jul 25.

Authors

Siqi Huang¹, Su Shuyi¹, Haibo Gan¹, Wu Linjun¹, Chaohui Lin², Xu Danyuan¹, Haifeng Zhou³, Xuliang Lin⁴, Yanlin Qin⁵

Affiliations

¹ School of Chemical Engineering and Light Industry, Guangdong University of Technology, Guangzhou, China.
² School of Electro-mechanical Engineering, Guangdong University of Technology, Guangzhou, China.
³ Key Laboratory of Low Carbon Energy and Chemical Engineering, College of Chemical and Environmental Engineering, Shandong University of Science and Technology, Qingdao, China.
⁴ School of Chemical Engineering and Light Industry, Guangdong University of Technology, Guangzhou, China. Electronic address: xllin@gdut.edu.cn.
⁵ School of Chemical Engineering and Light Industry, Guangdong University of Technology, Guangzhou, China. Electronic address: ylqin@gdut.edu.cn.

PMID: 31427024
DOI: 10.1016/j.carbpol.2019.115080

Abstract

In this study, hydroxyethyl cellulose (HEC) and polyvinyl alcohol (PVA) as the framework, borax as the cross-linker, and biomass lignin from pulping black liquors and biorefinery as the plasticizer were used to synthesize the lignin-based HEC-PVA (LCP) self-healing conductive hydrogel with highly stretchable and thermosensitive properties by the one-step fabrication method. Compared with the PVA hydrogel, the maximum storage modulus and the elongation rate was increased by 7 times and 20 times, respectively. Uniformly distributed lignin could increase the mobility and distance of polymer molecular chains, therefore improve the viscoelasticity and stretchability of the LCP self-healing hydrogel. The LCP hydrogel could recover to the original state in 12 s after 10000% shear strain for 4 cycles. The LCP hydrogel also presented good thermosensitivity and electrical conductivity, and were very promising for applications in the fields of 3D printing and wearable electronic devices, that broadened the efficient utilization of biorefinery lignin.

Keywords: Borax; Lignin; PVA; Rheology; Thermosensitive.