Cellulose (2017) 24:1759–1773 DOI 10.1007/s10570-017-1220-2
ORIGINAL PAPER
Multi-layer nanopaper based composites
. Jessica Lucenius . Monika O¨ sterberg . Alexander Bismarck
Andreas Mautner
Received: 13 July 2016 / Accepted: 13 February 2017 / Published online: 20 February 2017 The Author(s) 2017. This article is published with open access at Springerlink.com
Abstract Native cellulose nanofibrils (CNF) were prepared from bleached birch pulp without any chemical or enzymatic pretreatment. These CNF were modified by adsorption of a small amount of water- soluble polysaccharides and used to prepare nanopa- pers, which were processed into composites by lamination with an epoxy resin and subsequently cured. The results were compared to the properties of composites prepared using bacterial cellulose nanopa- pers, since bacterial cellulose constitutes highly pure and crystalline cellulose. It was found that both types of nanopapers significantly improved both the thermal stability and mechanical properties of the epoxy resin. As anticipated, addition of only 2 wt% of water-
soluble polysaccharides efficiently hindered crack- propagation within the nanopaper and significantly improved the tensile strength and work of fracture compared to composites containing a conventional nanopaper reinforcement. The mechanical properties of the composites thus reflected the improvement of the nanopaper properties by the polysaccharides. Moreover, it was possible to predict the properties of the final composite from the mechanical performance of the nanopapers.
Keywords
Nanocellulose Bacterial cellulose
Epoxy resin Nanocomposite
Introduction
Andreas Mautner and Jessica Lucenius have contributed equally as first authors.
During the last decades natural fiber composites have gained renewed attention due to environmental issues associated with conventional composites produced from synthetic materials (Moon et al. 2011; Blaker et al. 2014; Mariano et al. 2014). Even though progress was made in recycling of high performance compos- ites, these types of materials still pose significant waste issues (Montrikittiphant et al. 2014; Pimenta and Pinho 2011). Thus, composites based on renew- able resources, utilizing clean and cheap production routes have been proposed as an alternative (Lee et al. 2012c). Among the most promising approaches iden- tified for the production of high performance
A. Mautner A. Bismarck Polymer and Composite Engineering (PaCE) Group, Faculty of Chemistry, Institute for Materials Chemistry and Research, University of Vienna, Vienna, Austria J. Lucenius M. O¨ sterberg School of Chemical Technology, Department of Forest Products Technology, Aalto University, Espoo, Finland A. Bismarck ( & ) Polymer and Composite Engineering (PaCE) Group, Department of Chemical Engineering, Imperial College London, London, UK e-mail: alexander.bismarck@univie.ac.at URL: http://mc.univie.ac.at
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