Directed Assembly of Cellulose Nanocrystals in Their Native Solid‐State Template of a Processed Fiber Cell Wall

Nanoparticle assembly is intensely surveyed because of the numerous applications within fields such as catalysis, batteries, and biomedicine. Here, directed rod-like, biologically derived cellulose nanocrystals (CNCs) template a processed cotton fiber cell wall, that is, native origin CNCs, reported. It system where takes place in solid state simultaneously with top-down formation CNCs via hydrolysis HCl vapor. Upon hydrolysis, microfibrils break down to then pack together, resulting reduced pore size distribution original fiber. The denser packing demonstrated by N2 adsorption, water uptake, thermoporometry, small-angle X-ray scattering, hypothetically assigned attractive van der Waals interactions between CNCs.