Cellulose is a renewable and highly abundant material with excellent mechanical properties. Because of this, its applications are wide-ranging and ubiquitous. Its use in electronic devices provides an exciting alternative to current implementations of plastic substrates (1). Using knowledge of the nanostructure of cellulose, the present study demonstrates fabrications of an electronic paper using nanocellulose (nano-fibrillated bacterial cellulose -NFC) and multi-walled carbon nanotubes (MWCNTs) and graphene, see Figure 1. Our study shows that the quality of the films showed varying degrees of macroscopic quality. Surface inhomogeneities are suggested to be the result of polydispersity in NFC suspensions. Scanning electron microscopy of successful films showed that MWCNTs were embedded within the matrix structure of NFC. Raman spectra of composites confirmed the blend of materials and provided an indication of composite dispersion. 4-point probe measurements revealed a range of conductivities, from 1.06x10-6 Scm-1 to 0.0034 Scm-1. Finally, graphene composites (Gr-NFC) were made by exfoliating graphene flakes directly in NFC, as suggested by literature (2) . References 1. Shah J, Malcolm Brown R, Jr. Towards electronic paper displays made from microbial cellulose. Appl Microbiol Biotechnol. 2005 2005/01/01;66(4):352-5. English. 2. Paton KR, Varrla E, Backes C, Smith RJ, Khan U, O’Neill A, et al. Scalable production of large quantities of defect-free few-layer graphene by shear exfoliation in liquids. Nat Mater. 2014 06//print;13(6):624-30.

Nanocellulose composites for electronic paper displays

249th National Meeting (2015)

The official archive and repository for all ACS Meetings & Expositions abstracts and select posters or presentations.