Nature sustainability: sustainable high-strength fibers derived from natural bamboo!
As a high-quality engineering material, high-performance fiber has physical properties such as high tensile strength, high Young's modulus and large aspect ratio, and has been widely used in energy, construction, transportation and many other fields. However, synthetic fibers such as carbon fibers, glass fibers, and polyester fibers prepared based on petrochemical resources not only require complex and harsh process conditions, but also consume more energy and generate more greenhouse gas emissions. Therefore, under the development strategies of "carbon peak" and "carbon neutrality", how to make better use of high-performance natural fibers with a low-carbon footprint and naturally degradable is an important issue that researchers need to think about and solve.
The natural fibers isolated from plant sclerenchyma have multi-scale structural characteristics, which are manifested in that fibers obtained by different methods have significant differences in their micro-nano structures and mechanical properties. For example, ramie fibers separated from bast parts by chemical degumming method have a length of ~150mm, a diameter of 20-70μm, and a tensile strength of 0.8-1.5GPa. The nanofibers isolated from wood by top-down chemical methods have a length of less than 100μm, a diameter of 5-20nm, and a tensile strength of up to 7.5GPa, which can be further processed into nanofiber bundles with a diameter of 10μm and a tensile strength of 1.57GPa . However, the above-mentioned top-down method also needs to be equipped with a specific molding device, which is high in energy consumption and takes a long time, making it difficult to achieve industrial scale production.
Recently, Professor Hu Liangbing from the University of Maryland, USA, adopted a top-down approach to achieve large-scale extraction of high-performance long bamboo fiber bundles from bamboo stems.
