Self-assembly of graphene oxide and cellulose nanocrystals into continuous filament via interfacial nanoparticle complexation

Cellulose nanocrystals: chemistry, self-assembly, and applications.

Cellulose constitutes the most abundant renewable polymer resource available today. As a chemical raw material, it is generally well-known that it has been used in the form of fibers or derivatives for nearly 150 years for a wide spectrum of products and materials in daily life. What has not been known until relatively recently is that when cellulose fibers are subjected to acid hydrolysis, the...

Hierarchical Self-Assembly of Cellulose Nanocrystals in a Confined Geometry

Complex hierarchical architectures are ubiquitous in nature. By designing and controlling the interaction between elementary building blocks, nature is able to optimize a large variety of materials with multiple functionalities. Such control is, however, extremely challenging in man-made materials, due to the difficulties in controlling their interaction at different length scales simultaneousl...

Confined self-assembly of cellulose nanocrystals in a shrinking droplet.

We have studied how cellulose nanocrystals (CNC) self-assemble into liquid crystalline phases in shrinking, isolated droplets. By adjusting the water dissolution rate of an aqueous CNC droplet immersed in a binary toluene-ethanol mixture we can control the final morphology of the consolidated microbead. At low ethanol concentration in the surrounding fluid dense microbeads of spherical morpholo...

Continuous filaments of negatively charged cellulose nanofibrils and polyelectrolytes by interfacial complexation

Self-Assembly of Gold Nanocrystals into Discrete Coupled Plasmonic Structures

Development of methodologies for the controlled chemical assembly of nanoparticles into plasmonic molecules of predictable spatial geometry is vital in order to harness novel properties arising from the combination of the individual components constituting the resulting superstructures. This paper presents a route for fabrication of gold plasmonic structures of controlled stoichiometry obtained...