The application of cellulose nanoparticles “CNPs” and nanofibers “CNFs” as an alternative or replacement for nonbiodegradable fillers in thermoplastics has intensified due to their availability, sustainability, biodegradability, high mechanical strength, and low environmental safety risks. As of date, there are diverse amounts of methods that have been reported in the literature to synthesize CNPs and CNFs; of those methods, hydrolysis has been reported as the most reliable method. Furthermore, different literature investigations report that there are still some drawbacks associated with the CNP or CNF processing method such as, cellulose agglomerations and shape and size uniformity. Hence, we have queried different methods of CNP and CNF syntheses using commercial cellulose and investigated their characteristics to surmount those problems. In this study, we synthesized CNPs and CNFs using a conventional hydrolysis processing and its nonconventional ball milling processing counterpart under different solvent and matrix conditions to reduce agglomerations during processing and to improve monodispersity in size and shape. XRD, TGA, SEM and TEM, and TMA and DMA were used to study the physical and mechanical behavior of the particles and fibers under these controlled conditions. .<br/><br/>Funder Acknowledgements: The authors gratefully acknowledge the National Science Foundation under Grant Nos. NSF EPS-1158862, NSF HRD-1137681, NSF IGERT on Sustainable Electronics DGE-1144843, NSF AGEP HRD-1433005, NSF CHE-1503408 for support of this research

Systematic study of the influence of nanocellulose processing methods on its physical and mechanical properties

251st National Meeting (2016)

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