Wood Materials Science, ETH Zürich, Stefano-Franscini-Platz 3, CH-8093 Zürich, Switzerland.
Applied Wood Materials, EMPA - Swiss Federal Laboratories for Materials Science and Technology, Überlandstrasse 129, CH-8600 Dübendorf, Switzerland.
Sci Rep. 2016 Aug 10;6:31287. doi: 10.1038/srep31287.
Wood, a natural and abundant source of organic polymers, has been used as a scaffold to develop novel wood-polymer hybrid materials. Through a two-step surface-initiated Atom Transfer Radical Polymerization (ATRP), the porous wood structure can be effectively modified with polymer chains of various nature. In the present study, polystyrene and poly(N-isopropylacrylamide) were used. As shown with various characterization techniques including confocal Raman microscopy, FTIR, and SEM/EDX, the native wood ultrastructure and features are retained and the polymer chains can be introduced deep within the wood, i.e. inside the wood cell walls. The physical properties of the new materials have been studied, and results indicate that the insertion of polymer chains inside the wood cell wall alters the intrinsic properties of wood to yield a hybrid composite material with new functionalities. This approach to the functionalization of wood could lead to the fabrication of a new class of interesting functional materials and promote innovative utilizations of the renewable resource wood.
木材是一种天然且丰富的有机聚合物来源，已被用作开发新型木塑复合材料的支架。通过两步表面引发原子转移自由基聚合（ATRP），可以有效地用各种性质的聚合物链修饰多孔木材结构。在本研究中，使用了聚苯乙烯和聚（N-异丙基丙烯酰胺）。各种表征技术，包括共焦拉曼显微镜、FTIR 和 SEM/EDX 表明，天然木材的超微结构和特征得以保留，聚合物链可以深入木材内部，即木材细胞壁内部。对新材料的物理性能进行了研究，结果表明，聚合物链插入木材细胞壁内会改变木材的固有性质，从而产生具有新功能的混合复合材料。这种木材功能化的方法可以导致新型有趣功能材料的制造，并促进可再生资源木材的创新利用。
