Hydrophobization of arabinoxylan with n-butyl glycidyl ether yields stretchable thermoplastic materials
Journal article, 2021

Hemicelluloses are regarded as one of the first candidates for the development of value-added materials due to their renewability, abundance, and functionality. However, because most hemicelluloses are brittle, they can only be processed as a solution and cannot be processed using industrial melt-based polymer processing techniques. In this study, arabinoxylan (AX) was hydrophobized by incorporating butyl glycidyl ether (BuGE) into the hydroxyl groups through the opening of the BuGE epoxide ring, yielding alkoxy alcohols with terminal ethers. The formed BuGE derivatives were melt processable and can be manufactured into stretchable thermoplastic films through compression molding, which has never been done before with hemicellulose modified in a single step. The structural and thermomechanical properties of the one-step synthesis approach were compared to those of a two-step synthesis with a pre-activation step to demonstrate its robustness. The strain at break for the one-step synthesized AX thermoplastic with 3 mol of BuGE is ≈200%. These findings suggest that thermoplastic polymers can be composited with hemicelluloses or that thermoplastic polymers made entirely of hemicelluloses can be designed as packaging and stretchable electronics supports.

One-step synthesis

Arabinoxylan

Melt compression

Thermoplastic

Renewable biomass

Author

Parveen Kumar Deralia

Chalmers, Chemistry and Chemical Engineering, Applied Chemistry

Aline Maire Du Poset

Chalmers, Chemistry and Chemical Engineering, Applied Chemistry

Anja Lund

Chalmers, Chemistry and Chemical Engineering, Applied Chemistry

Anette Larsson

Chalmers, Chemistry and Chemical Engineering, Applied Chemistry

Anna Ström

Chalmers, Chemistry and Chemical Engineering, Applied Chemistry

Gunnar Westman

Chalmers, Chemistry and Chemical Engineering, Chemistry and Biochemistry

International Journal of Biological Macromolecules

0141-8130 (ISSN) 18790003 (eISSN)

Vol. 188 491-500

Subject Categories

Polymer Chemistry

Polymer Technologies

Materials Chemistry

DOI

10.1016/j.ijbiomac.2021.08.041

PubMed

34389389

More information

Latest update

8/27/2021