No abstract

The packaging of fresh foods is increasingly focusing on biodegradable composites made from natural resources. Environmental worries about traditional plastics can be reduced by developing robust, eco-friendly biocomposites. Here, carboxymethyl chitosan (CMCS) was co-solubilized with cellulose to successfully fabricate highly transparent, sturdy composite films (CSCs). All composite films exhibited better thermal stability, high transparency, and robust mechanical strength due to physical cross-linking and hydrogen bonds between homogeneously dispersed CMCS and cellulose molecules. Particularly, compared to CSC-0, the tensile strength and elongation at break of CSC-3 were increased by 68.8 and 23.2%, respectively. Additionally, CSCs showed excellent barrier capacity and good antibacterial ability for suitable food packaging materials. These CSCs with excellent properties can be used to package fruit to reduce water loss from the fruit and increase its shelf life.

No abstract

With the fast growth of wearable intelligent devices, flexible sensors with a broad strain sensing range and high sensitivity are in urgent demand. Furthermore, the sensitivity of flexible wearable electronic devices to various signal capture depends on multiple interfacial bond interactions and a microstructure. However, a flexible sensor without multiple interfacial bonds has poor mechanical properties, low sensitivity/conductivity, and single sensing function to limit commercial sensor application. In this work, the novel dip-coating technique was used to design a flexible sensor based on polyvinyl alcohol with multiple interfacial bond interactions and a microcrack structure. Interestingly, the sensor exhibits high sensitivity with gauge factor > 100, a high conductivity of 356 mS m–1, impressive thermal sensitivity (0.01071 °C–1), a large strain of 344.5%, and excellent wear-resistance and durability. Possible sensing mechanisms under multiple stimuli have been presented. Moreover, flexible sensors with multiple signal monitoring can monitor real-time full-range human body motion and physical signal collection, providing a promising strategy to develop this sensor with outstanding performance in flexible sensor and sporting applications.

Following the global trend of the plastic ban driven by the non-degradable plastic intrusion into the environment, cellulose as an abundant natural polymer has gradually been exploited as an eco-friendly...