1. Nanoscale Assembly of Cellulose Nanocrystals during Drying and Redispersion
- Author
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Lennart Bergström, Christina Schütz, Michael Agthe, Korneliya Gordeyeva, Andreas Fall, Daniela Stoeckel, and Yingxin Liu
- Subjects
chemistry.chemical_classification ,Materials science ,Polymers and Plastics ,Scattering ,Organic Chemistry ,02 engineering and technology ,010402 general chemistry ,021001 nanoscience & nanotechnology ,01 natural sciences ,0104 chemical sciences ,Inorganic Chemistry ,chemistry.chemical_compound ,Nanocrystal ,chemistry ,Chemical engineering ,Liquid crystal ,Self-healing hydrogels ,Materials Chemistry ,Particle ,Cellulose ,Counterion ,0210 nano-technology ,Structure factor - Abstract
We have followed the structural evolution during evaporation-induced self-assembly of sulfonated cellulose nanocrystal (CNC) in the presence of H+ and Li+ counterions by small-angle X-ray scattering. Drying of CNC-H dispersions results in ordered films that could not be readily redispersed, while the CNC-Li films were disordered and prone to reswelling and redispersion. The scaling of the separation distance (d) between CNC particles and the particle concentration (c) shows that the CNC-H dispersions display a unidimensional contraction of the nematic structure (d ∝ c–1) during drying, while the CNC-Li dispersions consolidate isotropically (d ∝ c–1/3), which is characteristic for hydrogels with no preferential orientation. Temporal evolution of the structure factor and complementary dynamic light-scattering measurements show that CNC-Li is more aggregated than CNC-H during evaporation-induced assembly. Insights on the structural evolution during CNC assembly and redispersion can promote development of nov...
- Published
- 2022