A high-performance, sustainable nacre-mimetic film with montmorillonite nanosheets crosslinked natural wood powders

Sustainable structural materials have been developed to advance the global sustainable development. However, construction of high-performance and low cost sustainable structural materials are still huge challenges. Herein, inspired by unique architectures and abundant interfacial interactions from natural nacre, a flexible transparent film is assembled by 2,2,6,6-tetramethylpiperidine-1-oxylradi-cal (TEMPO)-modified natural wood powders (T-NWPs) and montmorillonite (MMT) nanosheets. The typical layered hierarchical structures and interfacial interactions endow the resulting nanocomposite with fascinating properties, including a high tensile strength (442.00 ± 1.98 MPa), a high toughness (5.49 ± 1.06 MJ/m3), a high modulus (27.54 ± 3.47 GPa), excellent tolerance at extreme temperature (−196 °C ∼ 120 °C), and outstanding flame retardance, which allow this sustainable T-NWPs-MMT material can be applied in packaging, flexible device and engineering design. Meanwhile, the bioinspired design provides promising strategies for building high-performance and multifunctional sustainable structural materials with natural wood processing residues.