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Preparation of tough cellulose II nanofibers with high thermal stability from wood

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Abstract

Well-dispersed cellulose II nanofibers with high purity of 92 % and uniform width of 15–40 nm were isolated from wood and compared to cellulose I nanofibers. First, ground wood powder was purified by series of chemical treatments. The resulting purified pulp was treated with 17.5 wt% sodium hydroxide (NaOH) solution to mercerize the cellulose. The mercerized pulp was further mechanically nanofibrillated to isolate the nanofibers. X-ray diffraction patterns revealed that the purified pulp had been transformed into the cellulose II crystal structure after treatment with 17.5 wt% NaOH, and the cellulose II polymorph was retained after nanofibrillation. The cellulose II nanofiber sheet exhibited a decrease in Young’s modulus (8.6 GPa) and an increase in fracture strain (13.6 %) compared to the values for a cellulose I nanofiber sheet (11.8 GPa and 7.5 %, respectively), which translated into improved toughness. The cellulose II nanofiber sheet also showed a very low thermal expansion coefficient of 15.9 ppm/K in the range of 20–150 °C. Thermogravimetric analysis indicated that the cellulose II nanofiber sheet had better thermal stability than the cellulose I nanofiber sheet, which was likely due to the stronger hydrogen bonds in cellulose II crystal structure, as well as the higher purity of the cellulose II nanofibers.

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Acknowledgments

This work was financially supported by the Priority Academic Program Development of Jiangsu Higher Education Institutions (PAPD), the National Natural Science Foundation of China (NSFC 31170514, 31370557), Specialized Research Fund for the Doctoral Program of Higher Education of China (20113204110011).

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. College of Materials Science and Engineering, Nanjing Forestry University, Nanjing, 210037, China

    Haiying Wang & Dagang Li

  2. Research Institute for Sustainable Humanosphere, Kyoto University, Uji, 611-0011, Japan

    Hiroyuki Yano & Kentaro Abe

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  1. Haiying Wang
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  2. Dagang Li
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  3. Hiroyuki Yano
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  4. Kentaro Abe
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Correspondence to Dagang Li or Kentaro Abe.

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Wang, H., Li, D., Yano, H. et al. Preparation of tough cellulose II nanofibers with high thermal stability from wood. Cellulose 21, 1505–1515 (2014). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10570-014-0222-6

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