Liquid Transport and Real-Time Dye Purification via Lotus Petiole-Inspired Long-Range-Ordered Anisotropic Cellulose Nanofibril Aerogels

Abstract

Nowadays, large-scale oriented functional porous materials have been sought after by researchers. However, regulation of the long-range uniform and oriented structures of the material remains a challenge. Herein, ultralong anisotropic cellulose nanofibril (CNF) aerogels with uniformly ordered structures of pore walls inspired by lotus petioles were constructed by applying external speeds to counterbalance the growth driving forces of ice crystals. Based on the growth law of ice crystals, the ice crystals grew at a stable rate when the applied external speed was 0.04 mm/s, ensuring the consistent orientation of the large-scale CNF aerogel. The aerogel exhibited a rapid long-range directional transport ability to different liquid solvents, delivering ethanol up to 40 mm from bottom to top within 50 s. Moreover, by introducing rectorites with good cation-exchange properties, the resulting long-range composite possessed an enhanced adsorption capacity for methylene blue. Furthermore, aerogel successfully achieved realtime dye purification at a long distance, such as fast dye adsorption or selective adsorption. This flexible and straightforward strategy of fabricating ultralong oriented CNF aerogel materials is expected to promote the development of functional aerogels in directional liquid transport and sewage treatment.

Bioadaptive Porous 3D Scaffolds Comprising Cellulose and Chitosan Nanofibers Constructed by Pickering Emulsion Templating

“…Rather than HIPE‐templating or chemical cross‐linking, in this work, LIPE was fabricated by two different types of nanofibers, TOCNF and CsNF, followed by ice‐templating foam formation for preparing bio‐based 3D cell culture scaffolds. Based on previous study about advanced ice‐templating method, [ 54 ] it would be attractive to further regulate the pore structures by controlling the growth speed and direction of ice crystals, which will be expected to improve the bioadaptive properties of polysaccharide nanofibers‐derived foam scaffolds.…”

Facile fabrication of composite cellulose fibrous materials for efficient and consecutive dyeing wastewater treatment

“…Generally, various kinds of dyes usually are used simultaneously in the printing and dyeing industry production, thus good adsorption selectivity is also highly required for the dye adsorbents. 52 As shown in Fig. 7c, the initial MB/RhB mixture exhibits a color of purple, after flowing through and separating by the PDA@CF NWs column under the gravity driving of the simulated dyeing water itself (about 100 Pa), the filtrate (first 10 mL) exhibited a significant color of rose-red of the pure RhB solution.…”

Cellulose Structures as a Support or Template for Inorganic Nanostructures and Their Assemblies

“…Aerogels prepared from cellulose-rich waste are biodegradable, easy to functionalize for different uses, and are inexpensive due to the abundance of raw materials [ 61 ]. Cellulose aerogels have a wide area of potential applications such as particle filters, particle trappers, catalyst supports, and heat insulators [ 62 , 63 ] and have been evaluated for their capability to remove various pollutants from an aqueous medium [ 61 , 64 , 65 ]. Additionally, the application of cellulose aerogels for oil absorption applications has also been investigated [ 66 ].…”