With the environmental awareness towards a sustainable society, great efforts are nowadays invested to replace conventional plastics and hence decrease the dependency of materials generated from fossil fuel. Modern nanofibre reinforced bio-composites produced from renewable materials will in the future most probably be made exclusively from aqueous dispersions containing both the matrix polymer and nanofibres for reinforcement. In order to fully utilise the excellent inherent properties of the nanofibres it is essential to distribute them homogeneously throughout the formed nanocomposite and to avoid aggregation. In aqueous systems this is a challenging task since the particle stability will be determined both by the surface charge of the nanofibres and the matrix polymer as well as the interaction between the polymer and the nanofibres.<br/><br/>The colloidal stability of nanofibres is not only affected by electrostatic repulsions, but can also be improved by steric interactions by grafting or physically adsorbing polymers to the surface. Hence, in our work we have aimed to study different types of surface modifications of the cellulose nanofibrillar system and how these modifications affect, among others, the colloidal stability as well as the dispersion properties in both aqueous systems as well as non-aqueous systems.<br/><br/>

Controlling the dispersion properties of nanocellulose systems by surface modification

2019 Spring National Meeting

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