What is the nature of nanocellulose crystallinity

Project Description

Cellulose is the chief component of plant cell walls. It can be chemically, enzymatically, or mechanically processed into nanomaterials comprising both crystalline and amorphous regions. Nanocellulose has applications in such frontier areas as additive manufacturing, diagnostic sensors, and tissue regeneration. Development of new or improved applications would be aided by more thorough understanding of the nanocellulose physical properties, which differ based on biomass source and sample preparation techniques. However, this knowledge has been elusive when studied with conventional techniques. Wide angle x-ray scattering (WAXS) (UCSB) will provide transmission patterns from nanocellulose extracted from cotton, wood, and tunicate to gain insight into background scattering, preferred orientation, and crystal structure, along with a conventional laboratory diffractometer. The 4DSTEM and MicroED (UCLA) will be employed to determine unit cell dimensions and crystal morphology of various nanocellulose samples. These advanced facilities will enable the study of the especially small (2–20 nm) crystallites that provide relatively little information when analyzed using typical laboratory diffractometers, namely 1-dimensional diffraction patterns with high environmental background. In particular, the background and amorphous scattering models compete for the non-crystalline portions of the diffraction patterns, complicating analysis.

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