Improvement of the Performance of Plantation Wood by Grafting Water-Soluble Vinyl Monomers onto Cell Walls

The accomplishment of lightweight reinforcement of wood through an environmentally friendly approach has been seen as a tough nut to crack for a long time. In this study, a novel method inserting water-soluble vinyl monomers into wood cell walls followed by in situ polymerization was proposed. The distributions of the modifiers in the wood cell walls and the graft mechanism between water-soluble vinyl monomers and wood cell wall components were thoroughly investigated. Results indicated that the water-soluble vinyl monomers could effectively permeate into the wood cell walls and connected with the hydroxyl groups of the lignin and polysaccharides via covalent bonds. The lumen of the wood remained unfilled during the modification process, and just a 40% weight gain was achieved. However, a 68.37% antiswelling efficiency was achieved after a water-soluble vinyl monomer treatment under the optimized condition (when 20 wt % of NMA was coadded). The modulus of rupture and modulus of elasticity of the corresponding material increased 20.2% and 38.0%, respectively, compared with those of the untreated one.