Novel lignin-containing high-performance adhesive for extreme environment

The gradual depletion of petroleum is a main challenge restricting the development for the fine chemicals, such as epoxy resin adhesive. In this study, a novel lignin-containing high-performance epoxy resin adhesive is synthesized using lignin as precursor material. Lignin is a unique biomacromolecule with three dimensional network structure, large molecular weight, and aromatic structure. The lignin is simply hydrolyzed and modified by epichlorohydrin to obtain lignin-based epoxy prepolymer. The hydrolysis process effectively reduces the molecular weight and improves the chemical reactivity of lignin, thus increasing the number of modified functional groups and the dispersibility of lignin concurrently. With the introduction of the lignin-based epoxy prepolymers, the shear strength of the adhesive increases obviously and reaches 10.42 MPa, which displays 228% of the shear strength of commercial epoxy resin adhesives. Furthermore, the lignin-containing epoxy resin adhesive still displays excellent mechanical properties in extreme environments, including extreme temperature and high humidity environment.