Aerogel is a highly porous solid material with large internal surface area. Owing to these structural characteristics, aerogels show excellent performances as heat and sound insulators, adsorbents, separators, and catalyst supports.  Cellulose nanofibrils has recently been attracting much attention as a structural component of aerogel because of its superior mechanical properties. In this context, the cellulose nanofibrils chemically pretreated by TEMPO oxidation are a promising candidate as building blocks of aerogels. The TEMPO-oxidized cellulose nanofibrils (TOCNs) are well dispersed in water and spontaneously aligned to a nematic order. It has been found that very stiff hydrogels are formed by fixing the network structure of the self-aligned TOCNs. This stiff network structure of self-assembled TOCNs in hydrogels can be preserved even in the aerogels that are prepared via solvent-exchanging, followed by supercritical drying or freeze drying. However, their material properties have not been thoroughly explored so far. In this presentation, we will present fundamental properties of the aerogels prepared from the liquid-crystalline dispersion of cellulose nanofibrils.

Translucent and tough bulky aerogels prepared from liquid-crystalline dispersion of native cellulose nanofibrils

247th National Meeting (2014)

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