Adhesive made from wood works in a standard glue gun
Most widely used adhesives are toxic and derived from petroleum, but researchers have come up with a safe, recyclable alternative made from xylan, a component of plant cell walls
By James Woodford
4 June 2025
Glue guns typically use toxic petroleum-based adhesives
Shutterstock/Ekaterina43
A by-product of the timber industry has been turned into a safe and reusable hot-gun glue that could replace solvent-based adhesives that are toxic to humans and the environment.
Ziwen Lv at Beijing Forestry University in China and colleagues created the glue from a xylan, a component of plant cell walls.
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“Xylan is the material that holds cellulose together, although it is not itself a ‘glue’ in the traditional sense,” says Nick Aldred at the University of Essex, UK, who wasn’t involved in the study. “This work aims to re-purpose it as a glue.”
Lv’s team used sodium periodate and sodium borohydride to chemically modify the xylan, turning it into dialcohol xylan.
They say the resulting glue, which is extruded from a hot gun, has a bonding strength of 30 megapascals, surpassing conventional adhesives, including epoxy resin. The glue could also be reused by re-melting it, and maintained its original adhesion strength even after 10 cycles.
