Sustainable fluorescent elastomers derived from cellulose, coumarin, and plant oil with tunable mechanical performance.

The development of sustainable functional materials from renewable resources is a critical pursuit in modern materials science. In this work, we report a novel class of sustainable fluorescent elastomers fabricated by grafting a coumarin derivative, 7-acryloyloxy-4-methylcoumarin (AMC), as the fluorescent chromophores and a plant oil-based polymerizable monomer, lauryl acrylate (LA), from cellulose backbone via homogeneous reversible addition-fragmentation chain transfer (RAFT) polymerization. In this architecture, the rigid cellulose acts as the backbone, LA plays the role of soft segments to provide the stretchability, while AMC serves as the hard segments to enhance the tensile strength and endow the matrix with fluorescent performance. The resulting cellulose-graft-poly(7-acryloyloxy-4-methylcoumarin-co-lauryl acrylate) (Cell-g-P(AMC-co-LA)) copolymers exhibit tunable mechanical properties and strong fluorescence emission. This work demonstrates a feasible strategy for converting renewable natural cellulose into sustainable fluorescent elastomers by integrating coumarin and plant oil derivatives, providing new insights into the development of fluorescent materials from bio-derived resources.