Hydroplastic polymers as eco-friendly hydrosetting plastics

Jiaxiu Wang, Lukas Emmerich, Jianfeng Wu, Philipp Vana and Kai Zhang ()
Additional contact information
Jiaxiu Wang: Georg-August-University of Göttingen
Lukas Emmerich: Georg-August-University of Göttingen
Jianfeng Wu: Northwestern Polytechnical University
Philipp Vana: Georg-August-University of Göttingen
Kai Zhang: Georg-August-University of Göttingen

Nature Sustainability, 2021, vol. 4, issue 10, 877-883

Abstract: 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.

Date: 2021
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (1)

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41893-021-00743-1 Abstract (text/html)
Access to the full text of the articles in this series is restricted.

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:nat:natsus:v:4:y:2021:i:10:d:10.1038_s41893-021-00743-1

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
https://www.nature.com/natsustain/

DOI: 10.1038/s41893-021-00743-1

Access Statistics for this article

Nature Sustainability is currently edited by Monica Contestabile

More articles in Nature Sustainability from Nature
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Sonal Shukla () and Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing ().