Cellulose nanocrystals (CNC) are of interest as a very attractive material because of the relative low density (∼1.6 g/cm<sup>3</sup>), low cost, non-toxic character, high surface area and high modulus of elasticity (∼130 GPa). They can be isolated from various cellulose sources, such as wood pulp, cotton, ramie, bacterial cellulose, algae and tunicates by acid hydrolysis. In this work, the CNCs were obtained by hydrolysis of cotton filter paper in a desiccator saturated with HCl vapor, which provides a simple and fast method for the production of CNCs. However, the resulting CNCs were still tightly packed in the filter paper and their colloidal stability was also very low. Therefore, mechanical disintegration of CNCs and improvement of their colloidal stability by non-covalent modification by additive molecules, such as cellulose binding proteins and carbohydrates were investigated in this work. Dynamic light scattering (DLS), high performance anion exchange chromatography (HPAEC) and TEM were used to characterize the dispersion of CNCs. The dispersed and functionalized CNCs can further be used in high value-added application and as building blocks for nanocomposites.

Enhanced dispersion of cellulose nanocrystals for nanofibrilled cellulose nanocomposites

249th National Meeting (2015)

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