TY - EJOU AU - Shi, Ke AU - Wang, Luyang AU - Qi, Ruige AU - He, Chunxia TI - Bio-Adhesives Combined with Lotus Leaf Fiber to Prepare Bio-Composites for Substituting the Plastic Packaging Materials T2 - Journal of Renewable Materials PY - 2022 VL - 10 IS - 5 SN - 2164-6341 AB - This work was aim to prepare a packing material from natural resources to reduce the environment pollution caused by plastics. Four bio-adhesives (guar gum, sodium alginate, agar and chitosan) were combined with lotus leaf fibers to prepare degradable composites, respectively. The mechanical properties, moisture absorption profiles and the thermal conductivity of the composites were studied and the cross section morphology and the thermal properties of the composites were analyzed. The Fourier-transform infrared spectroscopy (FTIR) results showed that the polar groups such as –OH and –COO in bio-adhesives can form hydrogen bond with –OH in lotus leaf fibers to connect the two components. The combination of agar and lotus leaf fiber was good, and their composite had the best mechanical properties, with the tensile strength, flexural strength and impact strength of 2.05, 5.9 MPa and 4.29 kJ·m−2, respectively, and the composite had a low moisture absorption profile, and the equilibrium moisture absorption rate was 32.32%. The lotus leaf fiber/agar composite (LAC) had an excellent comprehensive performance and it was non-toxic, degradable and thermal insulating, which indicated that it had the potential to use in packaging field to substitute plastics. KW - Bio-adhesive; lotus leaf fiber; composite; mechanical properties; morphology DO - 10.32604/jrm.2022.017891