(362a) Biomass Derived Sustainable Materials and High-Performance Devices

Plastics impregnate all aspects of our daily lives. Now white pollution plagues the planet. Creating a solid platform for growth of sustainable alternatives to fossil-based products is important. Biomass, as the largest biomaterial on the earth, is abundant, sustainable, and versatile. Cellulose, hemicellulose, and lignin are three primary earth abundant biomaterials derived from biomass; however, cellulose is mainly used for paper fabrication, and most lignin and hemicellulose are under-utilized. In this talk, we will introduce our studies on broadening the application of biodegradable materials from biomass with small environmental footprint, such as nanocellulose for bio/electronic/energy, tannin from bark for pseudocapacitor, lignin from wood as anolyte in flow batteries, galactomannan from seeds for transient biosensor, indigo carmine from flowers as anolyte in flow system, compressible carbon aerogel made from bacterial cellulose as anode of K ion batteries and so on. Meanwhile, due to the metabolism, wood tracheids are perfectly aligned for the transportation of water and ions. In this talk, we will also introduce our works on using the well aligned structure for mass and charge transportation in both energy storage and energy generation.