Rendering Wood Veneers Flexible and Electrically Conductive through Delignification and Electroless Ni Plating

Abstract

Wood has unique advantages. However, the rigid structure and intrinsic insulating nature of wood limit its applications. Herein, a two-step process is developed to render wood veneers conductive and flexible. In the first step, most of the lignin and hemicellulose in the wood veneer are removed by hydrothermal treatment. In the second step, electroless Ni plating and subsequent pressing are carried out. The obtained Ni-plated veneer is flexible and bendable, and has a high tensile strength of 21.9 and 4.4 MPa along and across the channel direction, respectively, the former of which is considerably higher than that of carbon cloth and graphene foam. Moreover, this product exhibits high electrical conductivity around 1.1 × 103 S m−1, which is comparable to that of carbon cloth and graphene foam, and significantly outperforms previously reported wood-based conductors. This work reveals an effective strategy to transform cheap and renewable wood into a high value-added product that rivals expensive carbon cloth and graphene foam. The obtained product is particularly promising as a current collector for flexible and wearable electrochemical energy storage devices such as supercapacitors and Li-ion batteries.

On the Interface Design of Si and Multilayer Graphene for a High-Performance Li-Ion Battery Anode

“…For 1 h of growth with the natural cooling process, as shown in Figure 4a, the C 1s spectra of the Si/Al 2 O 3 -900 °C surface show a shoulder peak corresponding to C−O, while the main peak is located at 284.6 eV (CC band). 35,36 With the increase in sputtering time (30 s−90 s−210 s), the main peak shifts to 284.8 eV and the relative ratio of C−O increases. The vibration of the C 1s signal reveals that a C−O interlayer exists inner to the surface.…”

Performance and preparation of the electroless Ni wood-based composites

“…Zhu (2016) used waste wood chips to reprocess and use it to explore the work of replacing metal materials in certain corrosive environments, which has the effect of electrical conductivity and electromagnetic shield. Chen et al (2019) used wood as a substrate to prepare wood-based composites with excellent elasticity and electrical conductivity by using delignification and electroless Ni plating. Wood chemical plating has been used to prepare electromagnetic shielding particle board (Wang 2017), wear-resistant materials , and synthetic wood reflection absorption integrated electromagnetic shielding materials (Guo 2017) by chemically plating wood with Cu and Ni.…”