Recently we reported a new supermolecular structure of cellulose termed as 'nematic ordered cellulose (NOC)', which does not exhibit a typical X-ray diffraction pattern of the crystal, but shows highly oriented in the arrangements of beta-glucan molecular chains. The NOC films were prepared by stretching water-swollen gel-like films uniaxially at the draw ratio of 2.0 to produce the high orientation of the macromolecules, which was supported by the high-resolution electron microgram observation.      In this paper, we separately investigated the orientation of both the main chains and the side chains of hydroxyl (OH) groups in the beta-glucan chains of the NOC films using the vapor-phase deuteration and polarized FTIR. The dichroic study suggested that OH groups remained unoriented in spite of the main chains' orientation in the stretching direction. This disordered state of the OH groups may hinder the oriented crystallization during the preparation of NOC films.

Investigation of molecular orientation in nematic ordered cellulose films with vapor-phase deuteration and polarized FTIR

239th National Meeting (2010)

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