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Facile construction of cellulose/montmorillonite nanocomposite biobased plastics with flame retardant and gas barrier properties

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Abstract

Plastics with good flame retardant and gas barrier properties have been widely applied in the electrical industry. On the basis of the affinity between clay and cellulose, cellulose/montmorillonite (MMT) biobased plastics were constructed via a simple hot pressing of cellulose/MMT hydrogels prepared from a mixture of the cellulose solution and MMT suspension solution. The results of Fourier transform infrared spectra, X-ray diffraction and X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy (XPS) indicated that the MMT thin lamellae with about 4 nm thickness were uniformly dispersed in cellulose/MMT nanocomposite plastics. Moreover, transmission electron microscopy confirmed that an intercalated structure of MMT appeared in the cellulose/MMT. The experimental results revealed that MMT was well fixed in the cellulose matrix by the hydrogen bonding interaction and affinity between MMT and cellulose, leading to good miscibility. The tensile strength of the nanocomposite increased with an increase of MMT content. Moreover, the flame retardant of cellulose/MMT biobased plastic was improved with an increase of MMT content, while the biobased plastic with 20 wt% MMT achieved the highest limiting oxygen index of 29.3 %. Because of their good limiting oxygen index and gas barrier properties, these cellulose/MMT biobased plastics have potential applications in fields such as gas resistance, flame retardant, packaging material, etc.

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Acknowledgments

Our work was supported by the National Basic Research Program of China (973 Program, 2010CB732203), the Major Program of the National Natural Science Foundation of China (21334005) and the National Natural Science Foundation of China (51373125 and 21422405). The authors thank the facility support of the Natural Science Foundation of Hubei Province and the Fundamental Research Funds for the Central University.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. College of Chemistry and Molecule Sciences, Wuhan University, Wuhan, 430072, China

    Qiyang Wang, Jinghua Guo, Dingfeng Xu, Jie Cai & Lina Zhang

  2. National Laboratory for Clean Energy, Dalian Institute of Chemical Physics, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Dalian, 116023, Liaoning, China

    Yongtao Qiu & Jizhong Ren

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  1. Qiyang Wang
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  2. Jinghua Guo
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  4. Jie Cai
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  5. Yongtao Qiu
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  7. Lina Zhang
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Correspondence to Jie Cai or Lina Zhang.

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Wang, Q., Guo, J., Xu, D. et al. Facile construction of cellulose/montmorillonite nanocomposite biobased plastics with flame retardant and gas barrier properties. Cellulose 22, 3799–3810 (2015). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10570-015-0758-0

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