The authors proposed Aqueous counter collision (ACC) process, which is a gentle and rapid method, to prepare separate cellulose nanofibers (ACC-nanocellulose) as dispersion in water using only a pair of water jets, without the need for any chemical modifications. Although the surface of nanocellulose has been widely presumed as highly hydrophilic, the ACC process has shown the capability to impart hydrophobic faces onto the nanocellulose surfaces, resulting in amphiphilic Janus faces.<br/>The ACC-nanocellulose in fact exhibited different surface characteristics from those for other nanofibers prepared in different manners; particularly it appeared in stability of their emulsion, adsorption to hydrophobic resins and others, due to the hydrophobic faces on the ACC-nanocellulose surface.<br/>     This study involved how such some unique amphiphilic surface properties of the non-modified nanocellulose prepared by ACC can be applied to fabricate nanocomposites directly with polypropylene (PP) without thermal mixing/excluding. The critical process for it is to minimally coat the PP particle as a starting material with ACC-nanocellulose simply by immersing in the diluted aqueous suspension. The coated surface on PP particles are supposed to exhibit the melting point depression due to the interaction between the two components, whereas the cores of the PP are still intact. The DSC curves indicated appearance of the surface melting and then the core melting as heating temperature increased. Therefore, preheating with pressing at the temperature for the surface melting induced fusion among the coating ACC-nanocellulose to form cross-linking, leading to honeycomb frames.<br/>

Design for reinforced nanocomposites having embedded bamboo-ACC nanocellulose honeycomb by fabrication process due to nano-fusion

2019 Spring National Meeting

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