Design and build an elastic crosslinked network to strengthen and toughen soybean-meal based bioadhesive using organo-sepiolite and greener crosslinker triglycidylamine

Poor water resistance and curing layer brittleness are significant challenges of greener soybean meal (SM) adhesive promotion and application. In this study an elastic network was built to crosslink the SM adhesive and improve the cured layer toughness of the resultant adhesive. Long-chain organo-sepiolite (OSEP) was first prepared by compound modification using KH-560 and KH-602 silane coupling agents. Triglycidylamine (TGA), a greener crosslinking agent with a large number of effective epoxy functional groups, was then synthesized. SM-based adhesives were fabricated using SM, OSEP and TGA. Results indicated that an elastic network was fabricated by the cross-linked reaction of SM, OSEP, and TGA. The elastic network effectively improved the toughness of the resultant adhesive. The wet shear strength of the plywood (PlyW) bonded by SM with 1% OSEP (SM/TGA/OSEP-1 adhesive) increased by 60% to 1.25 MPa relative to that of the SM/TGA adhesive. This study provided a greener, simple and cheap method improving the toughness and wet shear strength of SM-based adhesive, which contributes to the industrialized application of the product.