Lightweight, bacteriostatic and thermally conductive wood plastic composite prepared by chitosan modified biointerfaces

Widely used plastic products are usually buried or directly discharged into the natural environment after use due to their difficulty in degradation, which will bring lasting harm to the fragile ecological environment. To solve the energy shortage and plastic pollution, wood plastic composite (WPC) has a great development prospect in contemporary society. However, the problem of interfacial compatibility between wood fibre and plastic leads to defects in WPC performance. This paper aims to use chitosan as an interfacial compatibiliser to modify tradi-tional WPC, thereby greatly improving its mechanical strength, endowing it with new functions of thermal conductivity and antibacterial properties, and exploring the optimal ratio of chitosan. The prepared WPC with chitosan (CS) content of 10% (WPC-10%CS) has the best performance, including good tensile strength (99.4 MPa) and flexural strength (79.6 MPa), high water resistance (water absorption only 1.86%) and corrosion resistance, excellent UV resistance and thermal stability. WPC-10%CS also shows high thermal conductivity (up to 1.21 W/mK) and antibacterial properties. In view of all these excellent properties, WPC-10%CS has the po-tential to become a viable candidate material on the path to sustainable development and can be widely used as a functional material in indoor and outdoor applications.

Automated summary

To solve the problems of plastic pollution and energy shortage, chitosan was used as an interfacial compatibilizer to modify traditional wood plastic composites (WPC), resulting in enhanced mechanical strength, thermal conductivity, and antibacterial properties. The optimal ratio of chitosan was found to be 10%. The modified WPC showed improved properties such as high tensile and flexural strength, water and corrosion resistance, UV resistance, and thermal stability. With its potential for sustainable development, WPC-10%CS can be widely used as a functional material both indoors and outdoors.