Cellulose was dissolved in NaOH/thiourea aqueous solvent under room temperature or NaOH/urea system with low contents via the freezing-thawing process to form an unstable cellulose solution. The results of NMR, AFM, static and dynamic light scattering revealed the isolated wormlike chain and their aggregates co-existed in the cellulose dilute solution, and the metastable thiourea (or urea)-NaOH-cellulose sheath structure could be broken at elevated temperature and/or concentration to aggregate in parallel to form nanofibers. The regenerated cellulose nanofibers could entangle with each other to form hydrogels, which exhibited homogeneous nanofibrous structure and excellent mechanical properties, as a result of the distinct architecture to disperse the stress of the materials. Moreover, the regenerated nanofibrous materials were a great matrix for the in-situ synthesis of the inorganic nanoparticles. Furthermore, the nanofibrous cellulose film deposited with polyaniline nanoparticles could efficiently promote the nervi ischiadicus regeneration without electrophotoluminescence. We opened up a completely new avenue to construct the high strength cellulose materials with nanofibrous architecture via a "bottom-up" fabrication method.<br/><b>Acknowledgements: </b>This work was supported by the Major Program of National Natural Science Foundation of China (21334005).

Construction of nanofibers from the unstable cellulose solution and their applications

251st National Meeting (2016)

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