Better together: synergy in nanocellulose blends

Abstract

Cellulose nanopapers have gained significant attention in recent years as large-scale reinforcement for high-loading cellulose nanocomposites, substrates for printed electronics and filter nanopapers for water treatment. The mechanical properties of nanopapers are of fundamental importance for all these applications. Cellulose nanopapers can simply be prepared by filtering a suspension of nanocellulose, followed by heat consolidation. It was already demonstrated that the mechanical properties of cellulose nanopapers can be tailored by the fineness of the fibrils used or by modifying nanocellulose fibrils for instance by polymer adsorption, but nanocellulose blends remain underexplored. In this work, we show that the mechanical and physical properties of cellulose nanopapers can be tuned by creating nanopapers from blends of various grades of nanocellulose, i.e. (mechanically refined) bacterial cellulose or cellulose nanofibrils extracted from never-dried bleached softwood pulp by chemical and mechanical pre-treatments. We found that nanopapers made from blends of two or three nanocellulose grades show synergistic effects resulting in improved stiffness, strength, ductility, toughness and physical properties.This article is part of a discussion meeting issue 'New horizons for cellulose nanotechnology'.

Characterization of aqueous cellulose nanofiber dispersions from microscopy movie data of Brownian particles by trajectory analysis

“…22 The blending of different types of CNFs can lead to improved mechanical properties of nanopapers. 40,41 The network structure of CNFs has been focused on in these existing reports, but it is nontrivial to directly evaluate it unless the samples are dried. 27 A vast amount of literature indicates the incessant novel ndings with respect to the specic properties of CNF-based materials.…”

Rapid Water Softening with TEMPO-Oxidized/Phosphorylated Nanopapers

“…Cellulose nanopapers, papers produced from cellulose nanofibrils (CNF) [ 40 ], have recently been applied to various membrane applications [ 41 ], both in size-exclusion operation [ 42 , 43 , 44 , 45 ] as well as for ion-exchange/adsorption nanopapers [ 46 , 47 , 48 ]. The pore size of size-exclusion nanopaper membranes was too big for the efficient removal of Ca 2+ and Mg 2+ , and the adsorption capacity for metal ions only moderate at approximately 20 mg g −1 .…”

Synthesis and structure determination of calcium silicate‐cellulose nanograss biocomposite

“…In this connection, it may be noted that microwave‐assisted synthesis is globally accepted as a promising technique for the synthesis of polymer‐based nanocomposites . It requires energy much lower than that used in conventional methods .…”

“…New generation nanocomposites with enhanced multifunctional properties are emerging in the field of chemical research offering relatively newer opportunities for antibacterial treatment, tissue engineering, cancer therapy, medical imaging, dental applications, drug delivery, etc . In this context, it needs to be noted that nanocellulose‐based composites and foams offer applications in antimicrobial filters, air and water filters, heavy metal filters, pollutant sensors, catalysis, and biofuel developments .…”

“…In this connection, it may be noted that microwave-assisted synthesis is globally accepted as a promising technique for the synthesis of polymer-based nanocomposites. [9][10][11] It requires energy much lower than that used in conventional methods. 11,13,[16][17][18] Thus, here we report the synthesis of calcium silicate-cellulose nanograss like nanocomposites by the simple microwave-assisted heating technique.…”