Towards lignin-based functional materials in a sustainable world
In light of the incessant consumption of raw materials in the world today, the search for sustainable resources is ever pressing. Lignin, the second most naturally abundant biomass, which makes up 15% to 35% of the cell walls of terrestrial plants, has always been treated as waste and used in low-va...
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| Published in | Green chemistry : an international journal and green chemistry resource : GC Vol. 18; no. 5; pp. 1175 - 12 |
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| Main Authors | , , , , , |
| Format | Journal Article |
| Language | English |
| Published |
01.01.2016
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| Subjects | |
| Online Access | Get full text |
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| Summary: | In light of the incessant consumption of raw materials in the world today, the search for sustainable resources is ever pressing. Lignin, the second most naturally abundant biomass, which makes up 15% to 35% of the cell walls of terrestrial plants, has always been treated as waste and used in low-value applications such as heat and electricity generation. However, its abundance in nature could potentially solve the problem of the rapidly depleting resources if it was successfully translated into a renewable resource or valorized to higher value materials. Advanced lignin modification chemistry has generated a number of functional lignin-based polymers, which integrate both the intrinsic features of lignin and additional properties of the grafted polymers. These modified lignin and its copolymers display better miscibility with other polymeric matrices, leading to improved performance for these lignin/polymer composites. This review summarizes the progress in using such biopolymers as reinforcement fillers, antioxidants, UV adsorbents, antimicrobial agents, carbon precursors and biomaterials for tissue engineering and gene therapy. Recent developments in lignin-based smart materials are discussed as well.
The recent developments of lignin were reviewed in terms of different approaches to synthesize lignin-based copolymers, the resulting features and the potential applications of such copolymers. |
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| Bibliography: | Dr Xian Jun Loh is a polymer chemist working in the inter-disciplinary field of biomaterials. He is currently the Programme Manager of the A*STAR Personal Care Programme. He is concurrently the Programme Manager of the Consumer Care Programme at the Institute of Materials Research and Engineering (IMRE) and an Assistant Professor at the National University of Singapore (NUS). He is also an adjunct scientist at the Singapore Eye Research Institute. His main research interests are in the design of supramolecular and stimuli-responsive polymers and hydrogels for biomedical and personal care applications. Currently, he is the author and co-author of 94 journal papers, 12 patents, 10 book chapters and 3 books, publishing mainly in the area of biomaterials. Dr Dan Kai received his B.E. in Biomedical Engineering from Xi'an Jiaotong University, China in 2006, and obtained an M.E. in Biomedical Engineering from the National Engineering Research Center for Biomaterials, Sichuan University, China in 2009. He obtained his Ph.D. degree at the NUS Graduate School for Integrated Science & Engineering, National University of Singapore, in 2013. Currently, he is working as a scientist at the Institute of Materials Research and Engineering, A*STAR, Singapore. His research interests are focused on the synthesis of lignin-based functional polymers, hydrogels and nanofibers for personal care products. He is also interested in engineering electrospun nanofibers for biomedical applications. ObjectType-Article-1 SourceType-Scholarly Journals-1 ObjectType-Feature-2 content type line 23 |
| ISSN: | 1463-9262 1463-9270 1463-9270 |
| DOI: | 10.1039/c5gc02616d |