Environmentally friendly wood-fibre-based moulded products with improved hydrophobicity and dimensional stability

Difficulties such as long production cycles and raw material waste for manual carving and traditional crafting of profiled wooden furniture must be overcome. Here, an eco-friendly wood-fibre-based moulded product was fabricated by a one-step profile moulding method, and the hydrophobicity and dimensional stability of the moulded product were improved by heat treatment. The moulded products were prepared by injection moulding at 160 °C and were then heat treated at 180 °C and 200 °C for 24 h. The water contact angles increased on the surfaces of the heat-treated products and decreased more slowly in a dynamic process of 70 s with increasing treatment temperature. Meanwhile, decreased surface free energy was also observed after heat treatment, and thickness swelling declined by 74.6% and 76.1% at treatment temperatures of 180 °C and 200 °C compared to moulded products without heat treatment, respectively. This study provided new ideas for the industrial production of wood-fibre-based profile products with a novel and high-efficiency method and also expanded the application of wood-fibre products in very humid environments. [Display omitted] •Eco-friendly wood-fibre- based product is fabricated by one-step profile moulding.•Heat treatment is adopted to improve the hydrophobicity and dimensional stability.•Resistance to water is reflected by dynamic wetting and thickness swelling analyses.•The chemical modifications of profile product caused by heat treatment are analysed.