Starch-Based Rehealable and Degradable Bioplastic Enabled by Dynamic Imine Chemistry

Abstract

The increasingly serious environmental pollution caused by petroleum-based nondegradable plastics has evoked intense research interest in the development of sustainable and degradable bioplastics. Starch is one of the most promising biopolymers for the preparation of bioplastic. However, it is still a great challenge to develop starch bioplastics with high strength, low water sensitivity, and excellent water resistance. Herein, we reported a facile chemical modification method for the synthesis of a novel starch bioplastic. In this process, an easily available starch derivate, dialdehyde starch (DAS), is cross-linked using diamine based on dynamic imine chemistry to prepare DAS-based polyimine (DAS-PI). This DAS-PI exhibits excellent thermal malleability, and it can be easily thermoformed into novel starch bioplastic without using any plasticizer. The resulting starch bioplastic shows high mechanical strength (40.6 MPa), high thermal stability, and excellent water/chemical resistance, as well as heat-induced self-healing ability. Moreover, it can be easily chemically degraded and recycled. This work provides a novel method of producing high-performance starch bioplastics without using plasticizers.

Reconstruction of Cellulose Intermolecular Interactions from Hydrogen Bonds to Dynamic Covalent Networks Enables a Thermo-processable Cellulosic Plastic with Tunable Strength and Toughness

“…Besides chemical recycling, cellulose plastics also can be mechanically recycled due to the presence of dynamic imine linkages enabling excellent cellulosic plastic reprocessability. − As shown in Figure S31a,b, the discarded cellulosic plastic DS=0.4 debris can be easily recycled via heat-pressing formation for the preparation of a new batch of cellulosic plastic DS=0.4 films. Figure S31c shows that the recovery of the tensile strength for cellulosic plastic DS=0.4 is 76%.…”

Replacing all petroleum-based chemical products with natural biomass-based chemical products: a tutorial review

“…Dialdehyde starch-based polyimine plastics have mechanical strength as high as 40.6 MPa, possess high water and chemical resistance and high thermal stability, while they are also biodegradable. 52 Moreover, Zdanowicz et al created thermoplastic starch with a ternary deep eutectic solvent (DES) based on urea/resorcinol/choline chloride in a 2 : 1 : 1 molar ratio and combined it with lignin. DES was effective as a plasticizer to make potato starch-based plastic without a significant loss in its elasticity and thermo-compressing properties (tensile strength of 7.4 MPa and elongation at break of 65%).…”

One‐Pot Synthesis of Depolymerizable δ‐Lactone Based Vitrimers

“…Still, these examples often involve harsh conditions, poor monomer recovery selectivity, and tedious separation processing before reusing, which could diminish the value of end-of-life vitrimers. [25][26][27][28][29][30][31] For these reasons, exploiting vitrimers that can directly depolymerize to reusable constituent monomers under mild conditions is appealing.…”