Recently, the College of Materials Science and Technology of Beijing Forestry Univerisity has made a series of new progress in soy protein-based adhesive, and the research results entitled "Development of a strong and conductive soy protein adhesive by building a hybrid structure based on multifunctional wood composite materials" "Improving coating and prepressing performance of soy protein-based adhesive by constructing a dual-bionic topological structure" "Development of a strong and multifunctional soy protein-based adhesive with excellent coating and prepressing in wet state by constructing a radical polymerization and organic-inorganic mineralization bionic structure" "Bioinspired water-retaining and strong soybean flour-based adhesive for efficient preparation of plywood"have been published in Journal of Cleaner Production (IF=11.072), the top journal of the first district of the Chinese Academy of Sciences in the field of environmental science and ecology.

Developing efficient and sustainable green adhesives to replace aldehyde-based adhesives has become an important strategy to address fossil resources depletion, environmental pollution, and clean production. Soy protein is a raw material-rich, renewable biomass material that can be used to prepare environmental-friendly adhesives. However, the weak interfacial adhesion of soy protein-based (SP) adhesives leads to poor coating and prepressing properties, thus limiting the large-scale application of the SP adhesives. In this study, a bionic "bond-stitch" molecular topology was designed and constructed in SP matrix to prepare a strong multifunctional adhesive. Inspiring by the strong adhesion of mussel, urushiol (U) with natural catechol structure and acrylamide were polymerized in situ into poly(urushiol-co-acrylamide) (PUAM) as stitching polymer, which was entangled with the SP network to form a bond-stitch molecular topology. The hydroxyapatite was used to construct an organic-inorganic hybridization in the SP matrix mimicking the tough cohesion of oysters. The resultant dual-bionic SP adhesive exhibited excellent coating performance, prepressing intensity (0.45 MPa), flame retardancy (the limiting oxygen index was 39.4%), mildew resistance (10 d), low volatile organic compounds release, and good antibacterial activity (the antibacterial rates against Escherichia coli, Staphylococcus aureus, and Candida albicans were 89.55%, 78.59%, and 99.91%, respectively.). The wet shear strength of the prepared SP adhesive was increased from 0.35 MPa to 1.17 MPa. This study provides a new strategy for the design and preparation of high-performance, sustainable, low-carbon footprint bio-adhesives and composites.

The first authors of the above research results are Li Yue, Huang Xinxin, Liu Zheng and Zhang Xin, doctoral students from the School of Materials Science and Technology, the corresponding author of the papers is Professor Gao Qiang, and Beijing Forestry University is the signature unit of the first author.

This work was financially supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China (642101016 & 32071702), China; Beijing Forestry University Outstanding Young Talent Cultivation Project (2019JQ03004), China.

Paper links:

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jclepro.2023.137461

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jclepro.2022.135572

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jclepro.2023.136730

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jclepro.2023.137739