Polymer-Assisted Metal Deposited Wood-Based Composites with Antibacterial and Conductive Properties

Compressible metallic porous materials (CMPMs) have great potential for development in the energy and environmental fields. However, the scale-up preparation of CMPMs with stable metal layers, excellent elasticity, and multifunctionality remains exceedingly challenging. In this study, we designed a novel strategy with the aid of polymer-assisted metal deposition to synthesize metallic porous wood (Ni-PW) with a hierarchical cellular structure and excellent elasticity. Our approach can produce highly compressible MPW using intrinsically porous delignified wood with only 15.16% strain loss under a large compressive strain of 40% after 1000 loading-unloading cycles and 129.4 mu m of the average porous size of the Ni-PW measured by mercury injection method. The resulting Ni-PW displays excellent antibacterial properties for Escherichia coli (E. coli) and Staphylococcus aureus (S. aureus) and electric conductivity (Resistance < 7 ty), which renders great potential in energy and environmental applications. This research provides a new insight into the fabrication of CMPMs in a cost-effective (similar to 56.5 yen m(-2)) and scalable way.