Regioselective Protection and Deprotection of Nanocellulose Molecular Design Architecture: Robust Platform for Multifunctional Applications

Abstract

Regioselectively substituted nanocellulose was synthesized by protecting the primary hydroxyl group. Herein, we took advantage of the different reactivities of primary and secondary hydroxyl groups to graft large capping structures. This study mainly focuses on regioselective installation of trityl protecting groups on nanocellulose chains. The elemental analysis and nuclear magnetic resonance spectroscopy of regioselectively substituted nanofibrillated cellulose (NFC) suggested that the trityl group was successfully grafted in the primary hydroxyl group with a degree of substitution of nearly 1. Hansen solubility parameters were employed, and the binary system composed of an ionic liquid and pyridine as a base was revealed to be the optimum condition for regioselective functionalization of nanocellulose. Interestingly, the dissolution of NFC in the ionic liquid and the subsequent deprotection process of NFC substrates hardly affected the crystalline structure of NFC (3.6% decrease in crystallinity). This method may provide endless possibilities for the design of advanced engineered nanomaterials with multiple functionalities. We envisage that this protection/deprotection approach may lead to a bright future for the fabrication of multifunctional devices based on nanocellulose.

Synthesis of hydrogels based on nanocellulose from garlic straw and regulating the release of allicin and its cytotoxicity

“…Xudong GAO 1, 2 , Yanan JIA 1 , Zhongqin CHEN 1 , Ramesh Kumar SANTHANAM 3 , Min ZHANG 4 , Chengwei HE 5 , Haixia CHEN 1 *  a nanostructures that has high strength, high crystallinity, high transparency and strong hydrophilicity (Kargarzadeh et al, 2017). The surface of nanocellulose contains a large number of hydroxyl groups, which further form the network structure through the hydrogen bond between the hydroxyl groups and their structural existence is very stable (Dias et al, 2021;Thakur et al, 2021). Thus, nanocellulose are widely used in the pharmaceutical field as biomaterials (Kamel et al, 2020;Nicu et al, 2021).…”