Recent concerns about sustainable development and petroleum resources depletion have led to look for alternative polymer materials based on renewable resources. In this context, nanofibrillated cellulose (NFC) displays attracting properties related to its unique nanostructure, high aspect ratio, excellent mechanical properties, biodegradability and renewability. NFC consists of long, flexible and interconnected cellulose nanofibers, which are isolated from wood or agricultural by-products by mechanical disintegration. Although it showed promise in a wide variety of applications (reinforcing filler, porous scaffold, emulsifying agent, templating nano-substrate…), its hydroxylated surface has been often pointed out as a limiting factor. For instance, the hydrogen bonding aggregation of NFC in low polarity environments rends it difficult to efficiently reinforce many commercial hydrophobic polymers. In this context, we developed a versatile method for the functionalization of NFC in water, which allowed improving its dispersive and interfacial properties when used as reinforcing filler in hydrophobic matrices. NFC produced from oat straw was silylated by a sol-gel process in water, using methyltrimethoxysilane (MTMS) as a model alkoxysilane. The silylated material was thoroughly characterized by elemental analysis, Fourier transform infrared (FT-IR) spectroscopy, solid state 13C and 29Si cross polarization-magic angle (CP-MAS) nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR), Scanning Electron Microscopy (SEM), Wavelength Dispersive X-Ray (WDX), contact angle measurements and thermal gravimetric analysis (TGA). The reinforcing properties of MTMS-treated NFC in PDMS networks will be particularly discussed, through the comparison of the static and dynamic mechanical properties of model nanocomposites.

Functionalization of nanofibrillated cellulose with alkoxysilanes in water and reinforcing properties in PDMS networks

249th National Meeting (2015)

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