Lightweight reinforced wood beams through compression of its surface layers combined with the removal of lignin and hemicellulose

When wood is used as a stressed component of building materials, the parts most prone to failure are the upper and lower surfaces which can be called the weak structure. In a hydrothermal environment, lignin and hemicellulose in wood readily soften and dissolve, thus leading to their designation as the weak structure. The weak structures results in the wood having a low strength. In this paper, the sandwich beam material can be obtained by two steps from the skin self-reinforcement method, whereby the weak structure of the wood surface was removed by the delignification, and then the wood surface was densified. The authenticity of the sandwich structure is proved by a scanning electron microscope (SEM) and density profile analysis. When the moisture content (MC) is 10 %-12 % and the mass loss ratio is 23.04 %, the optimal resilience of the sandwich beam is only 1 %, the maximum modulus of rupture (MOR) and modulus of elasticity (MOE) are 1.42 and 2.1 times greater than those of natural wood, respectively. This finding shows that our method strengthens the weak structure of natural wood, which has good flexural performance and springback ratio.

Light-Emitting Microfibers from Lotus Root for Eco-Friendly Optical Waveguides and Biosensing

Optical biosensors based on micro/nanofibers are highly valuable for probing and monitoring liquid environments and bioactivity. Most current optical biosensors, however, are still based on glass, semiconductors, or metallic materials, which might not be fully suitable for biologically relevant environments. Here, we introduce biocompatible and flexible microfibers from lotus silk as microenvironmental monitors that exhibit waveguiding of intrinsic fluorescence as well as of coupled light. These features make single-filament monitors excellent building blocks for a variety of sensing functions, including pH probing and detection of bacterial activity. These results pave the way for the development of new and entirely eco-friendly, potentially multiplexed biosensing platforms.

Chemical Characteristics of Wood Cell Wall with an Emphasis on Ultrastructure: A Mini-Review

Wood is complex in its chemical composition that has an important influence on its chemical behavior and mechanical strength. The complexity is reflected in the ultrastructure of the wood cell wall. In particular, the concentration of main components (cellulose, hemicelluloses and lignin) changes depending on many factors such as the different type or parts of wood, and varies in different cell wall layers. From an ultrastructural standpoint, we describe the current level of knowledge about chemical characteristics of the wood cell walls. The information of distribution of main components in the cell walls of normal wood, reaction wood and water-logged archaeological wood, the cellulose microfibrils orientation, and the interactions between main components were presented based on the use of advanced techniques including transmission electron microscopy, scanning electron microscopy, spectral imaging and nuclear magnetic resonance. In addition, the chemical changes of the wood cell wall during pretreatment are discussed. This mini-review not only provides a better understanding of wood chemistry, but also brings new insights into cell wall recalcitrance.

Flexible and Sensitivity-Adjustable Pressure Sensors Based on Carbonized Bacterial Nanocellulose/Wood-Derived Cellulose Nanofibril Composite Aerogels

For sustainability and environmental friendliness, the renewable biomaterials including cellulose have been widely used in flexible electronics, such as pressure sensors. Herein, the carbonized bacterial nanocellulose with excellent conductivity and wood-derived cellulose nanofibrils are combined to prepare the aerogel through directional ice-templating and freeze-drying. The obtained composite aerogel, which has a porous structure and aligned channels, is further employed as an active layer to prepare the resistive-type pressure sensor on a paper substrate. This pressure sensor exhibits remarkable flexibility, fast response, reliability, and especially adjustable sensitivity in a wide pressure range (0-100 kPa). In addition, the sensor's working mechanism and potential applications, such as motion detection, footstep recognition, and communication with smartphones via Bluetooth, are also well demonstrated. Moreover, this work provides novel insights into the development of green pressure sensors and the utilization of sustainable natural biomaterials in high-tech fields.

Multimodal characterization of acid-pretreated poplar reveals spectral and structural parameters strongly correlate with saccharification

Lignocellulose biomass can be transformed into sustainable chemicals, materials and energy but its natural recalcitrance requires the use of pretreatment to enhance subsequent catalytic steps. Dilute acid pretreatment is one of the most common and efficient ones, however its impact has not yet been investigated simultaneously at nano- and cellular-scales. Poplar samples have been pretreated by dilute acid at different controlled severities, then characterized by combined structural and spectral techniques (scanning electron microscopy, confocal microscopy, autofluorescence, fluorescence lifetime, Raman). Results show that pretreatment favours lignin depolymerization until severity of 2.4-2.5 while at severity of 2.7 lignin seems to repolymerize as revealed by broadening of autofluorescence spectrum and strong decrease in fluorescence lifetime. Importantly, both nano-scale and cellular-scale markers can predict hydrolysis yield of pretreated samples, highlighting some connections in the multiscale recalcitrance of lignocellulose.

Flexible and Highly Sensitive Resistive Pressure Sensor Based on Carbonized Crepe Paper with Corrugated Structure

Recently, cellulose paper based materials have emerged for applications in wearable "green" electronics due to their earth abundance, low cost, light weight, flexibility, and sustainability. Herein, for the first time, we develop an almost all cellulose paper based pressure sensor through a facile, cost-effective, scalable, and environment-friendly approach. The screen-printed interdigital electrodes on the flat printing paper and the carbonized crepe paper (CCP) with good conductivity are integrated into a flexible pressure sensor as substrates and active materials, respectively. The porous and corrugated structure of the CCP endows the pressure sensor with high sensitivity (2.56-5.67 kPa^-1 in the range of 0-2.53 kPa), wide workable pressure range (0-20 kPa), fast response time (<30 ms), low detection limit (∼0.9 Pa), and good durability (>3000 cycles). Additionally, we demonstrate the practical applications of the CCP pressure sensor in detection of finger touching, wrist pulse, respiration, phonation, acoustic vibration, etc., and real-time monitoring of spatial pressure distribution. The proposed CCP pressure sensor has great potentials in various applications as wearable electronics. Moreover, the subtle fabrication of the desired materials based on commercially available products provides new insights into the development of green electronics.

Label-free visualization of fruit lignification: Raman molecular imaging of loquat lignified cells

BACKGROUND

Flesh lignification, leading to increased fruit firmness, has been reported in several kinds of fruit. Understanding the mechanisms underlying fruit lignification is important to optimize the postharvest storage strategies and reduce the quality deterioration of postharvest fruit. Especially cellular level investigation of lignin deposition in fruits provides novel insight for deciphering the mechanisms underlying fruit lignification. The primary objective of this study was to establish a procedure of using Raman microspectroscopy technique to depict fruit lignification at the cell level.

RESULTS

Lignified cells, a special kind of cells contained high lignin content, were found abundantly scattered in red-fleshed 'Luoyangqing' loquat. Whereas these special lignified cells were barely detected in 'Baisha' loquat flesh. Dominant Raman bands of lignified cells were found primarily attributed to lignin (1664, 1628, 1603, 1467, and 1272 cm^-1), cellulose (1383, 1124 and 1098 cm^-1) and pectin (852 and 1740 cm^-1). The band intensity correlation analysis indicated the peak at 1335 cm^-1 assigned to either lignin or cellulose in previous works was related to lignin for the lignified cells. Multi-peaks Gaussian fitting successfully resolved the overlapped fingerprint peaks of lignin in 1550-1700 cm^-1 into three independent peaks, which were assigned to different functional groups of lignin. Furthermore, the spatially resolved Raman images of lignified cells were generated, indicating that lignin and cellulose saturated the whole lignified cells, pectin mainly located in the cell corner, and the parenchyma cells contained little lignin. In addition, both phloroglucinol-HCl staining and autofluorescence analysis confirmed the results of lignin distribution of Raman microscopic analysis.

CONCLUSIONS

A procedure for the simultaneous visualization of the main components of the flesh cells without labeling by high-resolution Raman microspectroscopy has been established. With Raman microscopic imaging technique, we can add a microscopic level to cell compositions, essential for a detailed molecular understanding of loquat lignification. Such method can be further used to chemically monitor the textural changes during the ripening process or postharvest storage of other fruits and vegetables.

Characterization of the Micromorphology and Topochemistry of Poplar Wood during Mild Ionic Liquid Pretreatment for Improving Enzymatic Saccharification

Ionic liquids (ILs) as designer solvents have been applied in biomass pretreatment to increase cellulose accessibility and therefore improve the enzymatic hydrolysis. We investigated the characterization of the micromorphology and the topochemistry of poplar wood during 1-ethyl-3-methylimidazolium acetate pretreatment with mild conditions (90 °C for 20 and 40 min) by multiple microscopic techniques (FE-SEM, CLSM, and CRM). Chemical composition analysis, XRD, cellulase adsorption isotherm, and enzymatic hydrolysis were also performed to monitor the variation of substrate properties. Our results indicated that the biomass conversion was greatly enhanced (from 20.57% to 73.64%) due to the cell wall deconstruction and lignin dissolution (29.83% lignin was removed after incubation for 40 min), rather than the decrystallization or crystallinity transformation of substrates. The mild ILs pretreatment, with less energy input, can not only enhance enzymatic hydrolysis, but also provide a potential approach as the first step in improving the sequential pretreatment effectiveness in integrated methods. This study provides new insights on understanding the ILs pretreatment with low temperature and short duration, which is critical for developing individual and/or combined pretreatment technologies with reduced energy consumption.