Facile Fabrication of Cellulosic Paper-based Composites with Temperature-controlled Hydrophobicity and Excellent Mechanical Strength

In this paper, we presented a novel strategy to employ a plant-derived carbohydrate polymer, i. e., cellulose, to prepare a hydrophobic composite. Cellulose was used as a scaffold, and ethylene-propylene side by side (ES) fiber was thermally melted and then coated on the cellulose surface to achieve hydrophobicity. Experimental results revealed that the thermo-coating ES fibers greatly increased the water contact angle of the cellulose scaffold from 25° to 153° while simultaneously enhanced the wet tensile strength of the composite approximately 6.7-fold (drying temperature of 170℃) compared with the pure cellulose paper. In particular, compared with other related research, the prepared cellulose-based composite possessed excellent hydrophobicity and superior mechanical strength, which introduces a new chemical engineering approach to prepare hydrophobic cellulose-based functional materials.