Cellulose structure is a mixture of different crystalline forms and an amorphous phase. X-Ray Diffraction (XRD) is a principle method used to study cellulose crystalline structures. Different methods have been developed to analyze XRD data to obtain cellulose structural parameters (Park et al. 2010). All methods employ a curve fitting process, for which the PeakFit software is largely used. In this study, Fourier transform and expansion analysis methods have been adopted to model amorphous cellulose X-Ray Diffraction (XRD) data after ball mill processing. Ball milled cellulose from plant (Avicel and wood pulp) and bacteria (G. xylinus) exhibit nearly identical XRD profiles, strongly suggesting that amorphous cellulose from any biological source may exhibit a common profile. In summary, an equation based on the Fourier transform coefficients derived from the Fourier transform of the amorphous cellulose XRD data has been shown to fit the amorphous cellulose XRD profile significantly better than the currently used Lorentzian and Gaussian functions. This new equation represents a new common shape function for the amorphous cellulose component of the XRD profile. This equation will be introduced into the PeakFit software allowing improved analysis of cellulose XRD data to be performed resulting in more accurate determination of crystallinity, crystal size and crystal spacing parameters.

Improvement of XRD spectrum analysis in the study of cellulose crystalline structure

247th National Meeting (2014)

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