High-performance green composites made by cellulose long filament-reinforced vanillin epoxy resin

Abstract

Developing high-performance composite materials from biobased resources is paving the path toward sustainability. This paper reports cellulose long filaments (CLFs)-reinforced Vanillin Epoxy (VE) green composite developed through vacuum-assisted resin transfer and compression molding techniques. The proposed green composite combines the strong and tough cellulose long filaments with the thermally stable and hydrophobic biobased VE resin. The reinforcement with CLFs improved the flexural strength and flexural modulus of neat biobased VE resin remarkably by 135.1% and 542.8%. The green composite possessed a Tg of 144 °C and a water contact angle (WCA) of 96.4o, demonstrating good thermal stability and hydrophobic properties. SEM and FTIR results showed a strong interaction between CLFs and biobased VE epoxy resin. The above characteristics make the proposed green composite a robust material for environmentally friendly and high-performance structural applications.

Keywords

• Natural fiber-reinforced green composites
• Fiber/matrix interface
• Thermal properties
• Flexural properties
• Wettability