Enantioselective disruption of cellulose nanocrystal self-assembly into chiral nematic phases in d-alanine solutions

Abstract

The chiral environment of enantiomerically pure D-Alanine solutions is observed to disrupt and modify the entropy-driven assembly of cellulose nanocrystals (CNCs) into a chiral nematic mesophase. The effect is specific...

Modulation of Tannic Acid on the Cholesteric Structure of Cellulose Nanocrystals

“…The rod spacing (d) among CNCs was calculated from the main peak position (q 0 ) (Table S2, where d = 2π/q 0 ). It is worth noting that, compared to pitch values in the literature (5−25 μm 40,56 ), the cholesteric pitch values in CNCs/TA systems are generally smaller, while the average rod spacing (60 to 42 nm) is relatively larger (50 to 5 nm 57 or 60 to 20 nm 58 in the literature). We have used these values to calculate the twist angle (θ) that one rod has to twist to its neighbor, assuming that θ = 360°× d/p, the rod twist angle (approximately 5.8°) is larger than that in the literature, probably due to the different sources and aspect ratios of CNCs in these studies (Table S3).…”