LAUSR

In this work, inspired by the dynamic sacrificial hydrogen bonds in biological materials, a highly strong, super tough, antibacterial and cost-effective biodegradable poly(vinyl alcohol) (PVA) nanocomposite material was developed by incorporating nanoscale antibacterial agent TA@LS-Ag. TA@LS-Ag was prepared from the green biomass tannic acid (TA) and sodium lignosulfonate (LS), and was facilely incorporated into the PVA matrix with the homogeneously interspersed nanoparticle size of about 20 nm. The PVA nanocomposite film with 2 wt% addition of TA@LS-Ag achieves the world's new highest specific toughness of 262 J/g among the PVA-based films, which is far higher than the natural spider silk (150~190 J/g), as well as a highly strong tensile strength of 131.6 MPa. The excellent tensile strength and super toughness are attributed to the synergy effect of the nanophase separation structure and the intense hydrogen bonding interactions between the nanoparticles and PVA matrix. The PVA/TA@LS-Ag nanocomposite films exhibit good antibacterial properties, despite the extremely low silver content (0.032~0.32 wt‰). TA@LS-Ag also endows the PVA films with excellent antioxidant and UV-shielding performance. As the biomass LS and TA and the PVA matrix are all biodegradable, this work offers a facile strategy for preparing high performance antibacterial and biodegradable polymeric materials.