Mechanically strong, cost-efficiency, and sustainable fully wood-derived structural materials by micro/nanoscale design

Sustainable structural materials with fully bio-based building blocks and great mechanical properties are vitally important for practical application. However, the challenges on how to evitable use petrochemical-based adhesive, improve their comprehensive mechanical strength, and reduce energy and time consumption still remain. Here, we report a robust and effective strategy with micro/nanoscale structure design to fabricate a mechanically strong and sustainable wood-derived structural material from fast-growing wood. Owing to the synergistic effect of aligned cellulose fiber, multi-layer structure, and hydrogen bonds, the obtained structural materials exhibited high mechanical properties of 158 MPa, high interfacial bonding strength of 1.13 MPa, and great Shore D hardness of 68.7. The role of hydrogen bonds in enhancing mechanical properties was also revealed. In addition, the adhesive and polymer are not used in the whole process, and the consumption of energy and time is reduced. The novel fully wood-derived materials provide more structural material selection and more micro/nanoscale structure design ideas.