INTRODUCTION
The concepts of green chemistry and sustainability have been
directing the development of chemical and material industries.
The growing global environment concern drives researchers to
develop energy, chemicals, and materials from renewable
resource replacing, or partially replacing traditional ones from
petroleum resources.1
Polymeric materials, such as polymer films, are of the most
important products used in all areas of daily life and worldwide
industries.2 Over the last decades, a great number of scientific
efforts were made to design, synthesize, and produce
sustainable or green polymers, and the pursuit of green
polymer will continue for the next decade.3 However, these
efforts are limited to develop polymer materials from
monomers, polysaccharides, and all kinds of isolated fractions
derived from biomass.4 The processes in producing monomers
and isolated fractions from biomass always involve in hazardous
chemicals, high cost, and complex procedures. It would be
more interesting to pursue materials directly from biomass
without pretreatment or prior separations to replace synthetic
polymer materials for traditional applications.
Lignocellulosic biomass in the form of plant, (such as wood,
straw, grass, bagasse etc.) represents the most abundant
biomass resource on the earth. Research toward converting
lignocellulosic biomass into energies, fuels, and platform
chemicals has expanded tremendously in this century.5
However, because of the complex chemical structure and
narrow processing window of lignocellulosic biomass, few
studies on directly transforming those resources to materials in
replacing of synthetic polymers have been reported.
Ionic liquids (ILs) were found to be excellent green solvents
for lignocellulosic biomass and subsequently used for the
processes of lignocellulosic biomass.6,7 Composite fiber and
aerogel materials were prepared upon dissolving wood in ILs.8
Aliphatic wood esters were also synthesized by homogeneous
reaction in ILs, and wood plastics composites were synthesized
by blending aliphatic wood esters with poly(styrene) and
poly(propylene).9,10 Even though, these efforts suffered from
one or more of the following disadvantages: poor performances,
no improvement on the processing properties of
lignocelllulosic biomass, not fully biobased and biodegradable.
8−10
Fully biobased film materials directly from sugarcane bagasse
without any additives were reported in a previous study.11 The
sugarcane bagasse films showed as high mechanical strength as
those of cellulose−starch−lignin composites.12 However, the
sugarcane bagasse films tend to craze due to brittle fracture, and
it is difficult to form a continuous film without any cracks
unless complicated processes are applied.11 Novel technologies
for preparing film materials with enhanced pliability and
processing property directly from sugarcane bagasse are to be
developed.