Patents involving nanocellulose: Analysis of their evolution since 2010

Nanocellulose: From Fundamentals to Advanced Applications

“…Facile and rapid one-step hydrolysis by H 2 SO 4 /HNO 3 mixed acid Cheng et al, 2020 Blue agave leaves and bagasse fibers Sonochemical acid hydrolysis enhanced with sonication Robles et al, 2018 Eucalyptus pulp Periodate oxidation route followed by reductive treatment with NaBH 4 Errokh et al, 2018 Cotton cellulose powder High-pressure homogenization controlling a process temperature Park et al, 2019 Commercial microcrystalline cellulose A two-step collaborative process combining solvothermal pretreatment and mechanical exfoliation Gao et al, 2019 Commercial microcrystalline cellulose Ball milling with water followed by centrifugation Kang et al, 2018 Lignocellulosic biomass Hydrolysis by Ni(II)-transition metal salt followed by washing with distilled water, centrifugation, sonication and dialysis Yahya et al, 2018 use of toxic chemicals, which are detrimental to human and the environment. More recently, Charreau et al have emphasized the increasing industrial interest on the field of cellulosic nanomaterials, which is evidenced by the astonishing increase in nanocellulose patents since 2010, and especially within the last 5 years, suggesting that the increasing trend would not stop in the following years (Charreau et al, 2020). For instance, more than 950 documents refereeing to CNCs have been published from 2010 and 2017.…”

“…It received a number of names throughout the two last decades encompassing nanocrystalline cellulose, rodlike cellulose crystals, nanowires, nanorods, nanoballs, cellulose crystallites, cellulose nanowhiskers, and cellulose whiskers (Brinchi et al, 2013;Charreau et al, 2013;Mariano et al, 2014;Vazquez et al, 2015;Trache et al, 2017). However, in the last few years the nomenclature has progressively converged to cellulose whiskers, cellulose nanowhiskers, and, more recently, to cellulose nanocrystals and nanocrystalline cellulose (Charreau et al, 2020). Nanofibrillated cellulose (CNF), commonly obtained by mechanical treatment, presents an entangled network structure with flexible, longer and wide nanofibers (20-100 nm in width and >10,000 nm in length), and lower crystallinity with respect to CNCs.…”

Editorial: Recent Trends in Preparation, Characterization and Applications of Nanocellulose

“…It has been shown that nanocellulose can be employed to prepare various high-value products with low environmental and societal impact. Nanocellulose has attracted a tremendous level of attention as revealed by the increasing number of scientific contributions and industrial investments in several fields (Trache, 2018;Dufresne, 2019;Naz et al, 2019;Charreau et al, 2020;Lizundia et al, 2020;Trache et al, 2020b;Zhao et al, 2020). The three-dimensional hierarchical structures that constitute these cellulose nanofibers at different scales, the combination of the physicochemical properties of cellulose, together with various advantages of nanomaterials (e.g., a high specific surface area, aspect ratio) open new opportunities in several fields, ranging from electronics to medical applications.…”

Cellulose Nanocrystals/Graphene Hybrids—A Promising New Class of Materials for Advanced Applications

“…In recent years, other types of nanofibers appeared such as amorphous nanocellulose, cellulose nanoyarn and cellulose nanoplatelets [17]. Several in-depth reviews with detailed discussions dealing with NC-based materials have been reported over the past few years, covering the nanocellulose sources, isolation methods, structure modification, potential uses, advantages and shortcomings [11,16,20,23,35,36,38,40,41,[78][79][80][81][82][83]. In the following, we concisely go through current extraction methods of CNC and describe their outstanding features.…”