The use of renewable materials has received a great deal of attention over the last several decades due to the environmental impact and finite resources of petroleum and other non-renewable resources. Cellulose nanofibrils are a type of nanomaterial made from natural resources like wood and non-wood plants, and they are considering promising alternative to existing materials in numerous fields ...

Aqueous suspensions of polysaccharide (cellulose, chitin or starch) nanocrystals can be prepared by acid hydrolysis of biomass. The main problem with their practical use is related to the homogeneous dispersion of these nanoparticles within a polymeric matrix. Water is the preferred processing medium. A new and interesting way for the processing of polysaccharide nanocrystals-based nanocomposit...

Here, we present superhydrophobic, hierarchical, and nanostructured cryogels made from cellulose nanofibers (CNFs) nanocrystals (CNCs), double cross-linked with MXene nanosheets poly(vinyl alcohol) (PVA) in the presence of tetradecylamine.

We studied the use of cellulose nanocrystals (CNXs) obtained after acid hydrolysis of ramie cellulose fibers to reinforce poly(ε-caprolactone) (PCL) nanofibers. Chemical grafting with low-molecular-weight PCL diol onto the CNXs was carried out in an attempt to improve the interfacial adhesion with the fiber matrix. Grafting was confirmed via infrared spectroscopy and thermogravimetric analyses....

Abstract In the present paper, a novel bio-based resin derived from epichlorohydrin was reinforced by Graphene NanoPlatelets (GNPs) and Cellulose NanoCrystals (CNCs) in different weight ratios characterized experimentally through tension tests fracture toughness on bulk specimens. The nanofillers were applied separately. experimental results showed that neat has Young’s modulus of 3.29 GPa, ten...

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...

Good dispersion of cellulose nanocrystals (CNCs) in the polymer matrix is one of the key factors to obtaining good properties in the resulting nanocomposites. However, the preparation of individually dispersed CNCs in solvents or in polymer matrices has been a challenge. In this study, individually dispersed wood-based CNCs have been successfully prepared in solvents, including dimethylformamid...

We have discovered that the self-assembly of cellulose nanocrystals (CNCs) into chiral nematic phases varies significantly with the substrate and evaporation rate. These variables allow the reflectance peak of iridescent chiral nematic films of CNCs and mesoporous silica templated from CNCs to be tuned over a wide range of wavelengths.

© 2012 Zhou and Wu, licensee InTech. This is an open access chapter distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited. Recent Development in Applications of Cellulose Nanocrystals for Advanced Polymer-Based...

Cellulose nanocrystals (CNCs) are gaining interest as a "green" nanomaterial with superior mechanical and chemical properties for high-performance nanocomposite materials; however, there is a lack of accurate material property characterization of individual CNCs. Here, a detailed study of the topography, elastic and adhesive properties of individual wood-derived CNCs is performed using atomic f...