At present, global plastic production has exceeded 368 million tons, of which single-use plastic products account for about 40%. These plastic products, especially materials such as disposable packaging and disposable tableware, face problems such as large total consumption, serious waste and difficulty in recycling. At the same time, widely used disposable plastic tableware is usually buried or directly discarded into the natural environment after use. A large number of studies have shown that plastics will release microplastics during daily use and degradation, which will further affect the environment and human health. constitute a potential threat. Therefore, it is imperative to develop high-performance structural materials with excellent mechanical strength and heat resistance without releasing microplastics.

Recently, the team of Academician Yu Shuhong of University of Science and Technology of China reported a high-performance structural material with excellent mechanical and thermal properties made of food-safe Sargassum cellulose nanofibers (SCNF). Related results were published in Advanced Materials (Adv. Mater. 2022, DOI: 10.1002/adma.202208098) under the title "Ultrastrong, Thermally Stable, and Food-Safe Seaweed-Based Structural Material for Tableware". The first authors of the paper are doctoral candidates Li Dehan, Han Zimeng and postgraduate He Qian, and the corresponding authors are Associate Researcher Guan Qingfang and Professor Yu Shuhong.

First, the researchers developed an efficient and low-energy method to extract a food-safe SCNF from Sargassum industrial waste under mild reaction conditions. Then, SCNF hydrogels were formed after Ca2+ cross-linking, and the SCNF hydrogels were prepared into high-strength (283 MPa) and high thermal stability (>160 °C) Sargassum cellulose-based structural materials by a top-down method. (SCNSM). Compared with most commercially available plastics, the structural material has higher stiffness and can also dissipate energy by disrupting and reorganizing the reversible inter-nanofiber hydrogen bond interaction network, thereby achieving strength, modulus, toughness and thermal balance of stability. At the same time, the structural material also has good processability and food safety, and can be processed into different shapes of tableware, knives and forks, etc. In addition, this structural material can also be modified by polylactic acid and curcumin for better waterproof and antibacterial properties. The overall performance of tableware based on this structural material is superior to that of current commercial plastic, wood-based, and polylactic acid-based tableware, showing the potential to replace these products in this field.

This work is supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China, the National Key R&D Program, the Collaborative Innovation Program of Chinese Universities, the Major Science and Technology Project of Anhui Province, the Special Fund for Fundamental Research Operations of Central Universities, and the Key R&D Project of Anhui Province.

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