Recently, cellulose paper based materials have emerged for applications in wearable "green" electronics due to their earth abundance, low cost, light weight, flexibility, and sustainability. Herein, for the first time, we develop an almost all cellulose paper based pressure sensor through a facile, cost-effective, scalable, and environment-friendly approach. The screen-printed interdigital electrodes on the flat printing paper and the carbonized crepe paper (CCP) with good conductivity are integrated into a flexible pressure sensor as substrates and active materials, respectively. The porous and corrugated structure of the CCP endows the pressure sensor with high sensitivity (2.56-5.67 kPa in the range of 0-2.53 kPa), wide workable pressure range (0-20 kPa), fast response time (<30 ms), low detection limit (∼0.9 Pa), and good durability (>3000 cycles). Additionally, we demonstrate the practical applications of the CCP pressure sensor in detection of finger touching, wrist pulse, respiration, phonation, acoustic vibration, etc., and real-time monitoring of spatial pressure distribution. The proposed CCP pressure sensor has great potentials in various applications as wearable electronics. Moreover, the subtle fabrication of the desired materials based on commercially available products provides new insights into the development of green electronics.
Lignin, a major component of the cell wall of vascular plants, has long been recognized for its negative impact and treated as a by-product in a biorefinery. This highly abundant by-product of the biorefinery is undervalued and underdeveloped due to its complex nature. The development of value-added products from lignin would greatly improve the economics of the biorefinery. The inherent properties of lignin significantly affect the productivity of the biorefinery processes and its potential applications. Although the structure and biosynthetic pathway of lignin have been studied for more than a century, they have not yet been completely elucidated. In this mini-review, the primary obstacles to elucidating the structure of native lignin, including separation and characterization, are highlighted. Several classical methods for separation and various NMR techniques, especially 2D HSQC NMR, for characterization of lignin are reviewed. Some potential applications of lignin are introduced. It is believed that a knowledge of the method to separate lignin from the cell wall and structural features of the lignin polymer from lignocellulosic materials will help to maximize the exploitation of lignocelluloses for the biorefinery as well as the utilization of lignin for novel materials and chemicals.
The development of sustainable and
efficient absorbents for oil
and organic pollutants cleaning is an attractive and challenging work.
Here, novel superhydrophobic microfibrillated cellulose aerogels (HMFCAs)
with high lipophilicity, ultralow density (≤5.08 mg/cm3), superior porosity (≥99.68%) as well as extremely
high mechanical stability were successfully prepared from microfibrillated
cellulose aerogels (MFCAs) via a facile and environmentally friendly
silanization reaction in liquid phase. The superhydrophobicity of
the as-prepared HMFCAs (water contact angle as high as 151.8°)
was attributed to the formation of polysiloxane on the surface of
HMFCAs by the silanization reaction. The HMFCAs exhibited excellent
oil/water selective absorption capacity with oil absorption up to
159 g/g. The reusability experiment showed that the adsorption capacity
still exceeded 92 g/g for pump oil after 30 absorption cycles, demonstrating
its superior reusability. Our work paves the way for the development
of sustainable and efficient absorbents toward oils and organic pollutant
removal applications.
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