Portal de Periódicos da CAPES

Nanocellulose-PE-b-PEG copolymer nanohybrid shish-kebab structure via interfacial crystallization

2016; Elsevier BV; Volume: 159; Linguagem: Inglês

10.1016/j.carbpol.2016.12.028

1879-1344

Morganna Ochoa, Nina Collazos, Tuan Le, Ramalingam Subramaniam, Melanie Sanders, Raj Pal Singh, Dilip Depan,

Natural Fiber Reinforced Composites

We report a novel nanohybrid shish-kebab (NHSK) architecture of cellulose nanofibers (CNFs) and a block copolymer, (polyethylene-b-polyethylene glycol) (PE-b-PEG). Cellulose microfibers were ultrasonically dispersed to generate cellulose nanofibers in the size range of 50±10nm in diameter, while the block copolymer was crystallized using a solution crystallization approach to prepare NHSK. This unique approach allows the flocculated NHSK product to transfer quickly from toluene to ethanol, in order to shorten the preparation time. Morphological analysis reveals, for the first time, that nanocellulose can be used to induce crystallization of a block copolymer to generate NHSK and trans-crystalline structure. Scanning electron microscopy (SEM) and X-ray diffraction (XRD) results reveals the crystal morphology and crystallinity changes by virtue of crystallization. The ordered periodic growth and alignment of polymer crystals is recognized as the virtue of molecular origin of extended polymer chains. The proposed hypothesis affords elucidation of NHSK architecture and promotes the designing of novel nanohybrids with controllable functionality.