Optical and mechanical properties of cellulose nanopaper structures

The objectives of this study are to prepare and investigate the optical and tensile properties of the obtained cellulose nanopaper structures. A ball mill mechanical pretreatment combined with a wet pulverization process by using an aqueous counter collision machine were used to extract CNFs from softwood and hardwood bleached kraft pulps. Cellulose nanofiber (CNF) nanopapers were fabricated via vacuum filtration and oven drying method. The mechanical and optical properties of the fabricated nanopaper were investigated by using tensile test and UV-vis spectrometer. Results have shown that the softwood sample demonstrated better mechanical properties than the hardwood sample. UV-vis transmittance measurements did not indicate significant differences.