Abstract
Nanocellulose papers offer high tensile strength and modulus but suffer from drawbacks such as their brittle nature. We show that mercerisation of cellulose nanopapers in strong alkaline media for 2 min to 24 h results in the (partial) transformation of native cellulose I into the more ductile cellulose II allomorph. The strain to failure of mercerised nanopapers tripled compared to the original nanopapers while retaining their tensile strength in excess of 100 MPa at the expense of a slight drop in modulus resulting in a significant increase in toughness (total work of fracture). An additional advantage of mercerisation is a reduction in porosity of the nanopapers and increased transparency.
| Original language | English |
|---|---|
| Pages (from-to) | 1533-1544 |
| Number of pages | 12 |
| Journal | Cellulose |
| Volume | 31 |
| Issue number | 3 |
| DOIs | |
| Publication status | Published - Feb 2024 |
Funding
We acknowledge funding provided by the University of Vienna through the Institute of Materials Chemistry. We are grateful to Klaus Ritter for the preliminary experiments, which in effect guided us to an improved experimental procedure. We greatly apprechiate Dr Irina Sulaeva and Prof. Antje Potthast (Department of Chemistry, Institute for Chemistry of Renewables, University of Natural Resources and Life Sciences (BOKU)) for their help in determining the cellulose molecular weight and the dicussions of the results. Open access funding provided by University of Vienna. Partial financial support was received from the University of Vienna and the Institute of Materials Chemistry under Grant Number 371300.
Austrian Fields of Science 2012
- 104019 Polymer sciences
Keywords
- All cellulose composites
- Mercerisation
- Nanocellulose
- Nanopapers
- Toughness