“…Lignin, an inexpensive biopolymer with high carbon content and excellent biodegradability, receives considerable interest (Li et al, 2021a;Wang et al, 2022). Despite being the second most common form of biomass on Earth, most lignin is burned for energy recovery, and only 5% of the material is utilized to produce biobased products, causing severe lignin underutilization and wastage (Bengtsson et al, 2020; Lobato-Peralta et al, 2021; Sun et al, 2022;Zhu et al, 2020). Consequently, novel use of lignin must be identi ed to raise its value.…”