“Smart” Materials Based on Cellulose: A Review of the Preparations, Properties, and Applications

Abstract

Cellulose is the most abundant biomass material in nature, and possesses some promising properties, such as mechanical robustness, hydrophilicity, biocompatibility, and biodegradability. Thus, cellulose has been widely applied in many fields. “Smart” materials based on cellulose have great advantages—especially their intelligent behaviors in reaction to environmental stimuli—and they can be applied to many circumstances, especially as biomaterials. This review aims to present the developments of “smart” materials based on cellulose in the last decade, including the preparations, properties, and applications of these materials. The preparations of “smart” materials based on cellulose by chemical modifications and physical incorporating/blending were reviewed. The responsiveness to pH, temperature, light, electricity, magnetic fields, and mechanical forces, etc. of these “smart” materials in their different forms such as copolymers, nanoparticles, gels, and membranes were also reviewed, and the applications as drug delivery systems, hydrogels, electronic active papers, sensors, shape memory materials and smart membranes, etc. were also described in this review.

Orientation of cellulose nanocrystals in electrospun polymer fibres

“…Cellulose is the most abundant biopolymer on earth and exhibits the potential to be reshaped into an array of forms ranging from non-woven paper to high performance fibres [1]. In addition, cellulose offers an attractive alternative to synthetic polymers due its biodegradability, renewability and sustainability.…”

Spherical nanocomposite particles prepared from mixed cellulose–chitosan solutions

“…Both biopolymers have b-glucosidic bonds and very similar structure. Their somewhat unique properties; especially the strong mechanical strength, biocompatibility and thermal stability of cellulose (Nishio 1994;Yamashiki et al 1990), and the wound healing, antibacterial properties of chitosan (Burkatovskaya et al 2006;Jain and Banerjee 2008;Kiyozumi et al 2006;Shepherd et al 1997), as well as their ability of self-assembly into intriguing micro-or nano-sized structures (Qiu and Hu 2013;Wu et al 2016;Zhang et al 2016), provide many options and ideas for functional materials design.…”

Biocompatible and Sustainable Optical Strain Sensors for Large‐Area Applications

“…[1] Many of the cellulose derivatives are commonly used in diverse industrial applications, such as food additives [2] and for biomedical devices [3] due to their non toxic and water soluble nature. Moreover, the self assembly nature [4] and responsiveness [5] of cellulosic biopolymers makes them extremely attractive for smart photonic applications [6,7] including sensing. [8,9] Among various types of cellulose and its derivatives, hydroxypropyl cellulose (HPC) encompasses all these desirable properties, which makes it an extraordinarily multifunctional and versatile material.…”