High-Strength, Decomposable, and Recyclable Sugarcane Bagasse-Based Composite Enabled by a Dynamic Imine Polymer

Abstract

Sugarcane bagasse (SB), a kind of renewable and low-cost biomass byproduct from the sugar industry, holds great potential to be processed into environmentally friendly composites for plastic substitution. Currently, the main strategy to develop SB-based composites is combining SB and traditional fossil-based plastics, making the resulting composites have poor degradability. Herein, an emerging and attractive dynamic imine polymer (DIP) was combined with SB by hot-pressing to develop an SB/DIP composite (SB/DIP). The resulting SB/DIP exhibited a tensile strength of 43.1 MPa and Young’s modulus of 546 MPa. The SB/DIP exhibited heat-induced repairability in its micromorphology and mechanical properties because of the network exchangeable character of DIP. The SB/DIP was fully decomposable and closed-loop recyclable due to the chemical reversibility of dynamic imine bonds in DIP networks. Such a high-performance SB/DIP composite represents a new type of sustainable and environmentally friendly plastic substitute.