Compared to traditional organic liquid electrolytes, which often present leakage, flammability, and chemical stability problems, solid polymer electrolytes (SPEs) are widely regarded as one of the most promising candidates for the development of safer lithium-ion batteries. Vitrimers are a new class of polymer materials consisting of dynamic covalent networks that can change their topology by thermally activated bond-exchange reactions.Herein, the recyclable and self-healing solid polymer electrolytes (SPEs) with a soy protein isolate (SPI)-based imine bond dynamic network are reported. This malleable covalent cross-linked network polymer can be reshaped and recycled at high temperature (100 °C) or only with water at ambient temperature (25 °C), which may realize the green processing of energy materials. The introduction of bis(trifluoromethane) sulfonimide lithium (LiTFSI) significantly reinforces the conductivity of the dynamic network to a maximum of 3.3 × 10 −4 S cm -1 . This simple and applicable method establishes new principles for designing scalable and flexible strategies for fabricating polymer electrolytes.

Divanillin (DV), which can be facilely synthesized via vanillin dimerization, was employed as a building block to formulate epoxy resin. DV was synthesized through a novel approach in hot water in only 30 min with a yield of 87.5%. The process involved FeSO4-catalyzed Na2S2O8-based oxidative coupling of vanillin without any purification, followed by treatment with biobased epichlorohydrin. Epoxidized-divanillin (EDV) was cured with the petroleum-based, commercially available hardener isophorone diamine (IPDA) and a biobased-diamine (GX-3090). Complete curing of the mixture was confirmed by Fourier transform infrared (FTIR) spectroscopy and statistical heat resistant-indices (Ts), which indicated the formation of cross-linked networks with a thermostability similar to materials prepared with diglycidyl ether bisphenol A (DGEBA, the commercial BPA-based resin). The epoxy resin developed with this new formulation had comparable storage moduli (1.7–2.3 GPa) and similar glass transition temperatures as commercial resins. The epoxy networks exhibited good solvent resistance, while the presence of aldehyde groups in EDV yielded in more readily cleavable ester and amide bonds during the cross-linking process, yielding a resin with improved degradation under acidic conditions. Almost 40% of the segments in networks cured with EDV/IPDA were solubilized in acetone after treatment with 1 M HCl at room temperature in 24 h.

The high recalcitrance of plant cell walls is an obstacle for effective chemical or biological conversion into renewable chemicals and transportation fuels. Here, we investigated the utilization of both oxygen (O2) and hydrogen peroxide (H2O2) as co-oxidants during alkaline–oxidative pretreatment to improve biomass fractionation and increase enzymatic digestibility. The oxidative pretreatment of hybrid poplar was studied over a variety of conditions. Employing O2 in addition to H2O2 as a co-oxidant during the two-stage alkaline pre-extraction/copper-catalyzed alkaline hydrogen peroxide (Cu-AHP) pretreatment process resulted in a substantial improvement in delignification relative to using H2O2 alone during the second-stage Cu-AHP pretreatment, leading to high overall sugar yields even at H2O2 loadings as low as 2% (w/w of the original biomass). The presence of H2O2, however, was both critical and synergistic. Performing analogous reactions in the absence of H2O2 resulted in approximately 25% less delignification and 30% decrease in sugar yields. The lignin isolated from this dual oxidant second stage had high aliphatic hydroxyl group content and reactivity to isocyanate, indicating that it is a promising substrate for the production of polyurethanes. To test the suitability of the isolated lignin as a source of aromatic monomers, the lignin was subjected to a sequential Bobbitt’s salt oxidation followed by a formic acid-catalyzed depolymerization process. Monomer yields of approximately 17% (w/w) were obtained, and the difference in yields was not significant between lignin isolated from our Cu-AHP process with and without O2 as a co-oxidant. Thus, the addition of O2 did not lead to significant lignin crosslinking, a result consistent with the two-dimensional heteronuclear single-quantum coherence NMR spectra of the isolated lignin.