The use of cellulose-rich fibres and nanocelluloses (NCs) in advanced materials and devices has received a renewed interest both due to the development of NCs, allowing for bottom-up engineering, and due to the increasing awareness of the need for renewable materials in our daily life. Regardless of the area of application of these materials the molecular interactions at the interface between fibres/NCs and other components will determine how well the excellent inherent properties of the cellulose material can be utilized. New measuring techniques, such as Atomic Force Microscopy (AFM), The Surface Force Apparatus (SFA), high resolution FTIR/Raman, Ellipsometry, Quartz Crystal Microbalance techniques and X-Ray scattering techniques just to mention a few, have opened up the possibility to determine these molecular interactions but the fibres/NCs are difficult, if not impossible, to use directly in these different methodologies with statistical significance in the achieved results. There has hence been a need to develop suitable model substrates of cellulose-rich materials to allow for a full use of the resolution in these techniques. In the present contribution the development of different model substrates and their use in different applications will be reviewed.<br/>The development of smooth cellulose surfaces allowed for the study of molecular adsorption at the solid liquid interface as well as for fundamental adhesion studies where the influence of dispersive and non-dispersive interactions could be separated. These model surfaces were also used for determining the Hamaker constant of cellulose by spectroscopic ellipsometry. More recently nanometer smooth, mm-sized cellulose beads have also been developed and used for fundamental swelling studies where the thermodynamics of swelling of fibres have been clarified. These beads have also been used in molecular adhesion studies using the JKR (Johnson-Kendal and Roberts) approach in order to clarify the importance of surface modifications on adhesion. Finally the development of filaments from NCs have allowed us to elucidate how the supramolecular structure of the fibre wall will affect the swelling of cellulose-rich materials and how different modifications will affect this swelling behaviour.

Use of model cellulose substrates to determine molecular interactions

2019 Spring National Meeting

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