Cellulosic fibres are ubiquitous in our daily life and a key material in the sustainable society of tomorrow. However, there are inherent features of cellulosic fibres and cellulose-based materials that limit their applicability. One such feature is the lack of ductility and (thermo)plasticity, which consequently limits the design possibilities to two-dimensional sheets and by creasing and/or folding therefrom formed geometries. Many approaches have been attempted to facilitate formability of cellulose fibres and cellulose nanofibrils to complex geometries, such as chemical modifications and composite approaches. The challenge in the first approach is to keep fibres intact for maintained wet-processing and papermaking, and in the latter approach is the addition of cellulose typically below 50 wt%, i.e. forming a fibre-reinforced composite that typically contains a non-biodegradable polymer matrix. In the present work, we present a concept where cellulose fibres are partly chemically modified to ductile, thermoplastic dialcohol cellulose, thereby facilitating not only maintained fibre processing to form ductile sheets, but also melt-processing of these fibres with or without any additional components. This obviously opens for a completely new type of cellulose-based materials, which was demonstrated by hydroforming of paper sheets into double-curved structures and extrusion and injection moulding into test pieces suitable for tensile testing. <br/>

Ductile and thermoplastic cellulose with novel application and design opportunities

255th National Meeting (2018)

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