Surface functionalisation of bacterial cellulose as the route to produce green polylactide nanocomposites with improved properties

By Koon-Yang Lee, J. Blaker, A. Bismarck. 2009

203 citations recorded by the source corpus.

The effect of surface functionalisation of bacterial cellulose nanofibrils (BC) and their use as reinforcement for polylactide (PLLA) nanocomposites was investigated. BC was functionalised with various organic acids via an esterification reaction. This rendered the otherwise hydrophilic BC hydrophobic and resulted in better compatibility (interfacial adhesion) between PLLA and BC. A direct wetting method, allowing the determination of the contact angle of polymer droplets on a single BC nanofibre, was developed to quantify the interfacial adhesion between PLLA and functionalised BC. It was found that the contact angle between PLLA droplets and functionalised BC decreased with increasing chain lengths of the organic acids used to hydrophobise BC. A novel method to compound BC with PLLA based on thermally induced phase separation (TIPS) to yield a dry form of pre-extrusion composite was also developed. The mechanical properties of the surface functionalised BC reinforced PLLA nanocomposites showed significant improvements when compared to neat PLLA and BC reinforced PLLA. The thermal degradation and viscoelastic behaviour of the nanocomposites were also improved over neat PLLA.

Subfields: Biomaterials, Polymers and Plastics

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/ca0b92dc26350e9937164b5f05c4cfa976314dd2

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In Biomaterials

In Polymers and Plastics

Citations in the corpus

Nanocellulose properties and applications in colloids and interfaces (2014, unknown): “ification of the cellulose to enable good dispersion remain limiting factors [113].”
Surface only modification of bacterial cellulose nanofibres with organic acids (2011, methodology): “Therefore, the mechanical properties of the resulting (modified) BC reinforced PLLA nanocomposites was improved ( Lee et al. 2009 ).”
A review of bacterial cellulose‐based drug delivery systems: their biochemistry, current approaches and future prospects (2014, background): “The study examined esterification with a range of organic acids in comparison with PLA, and the resultant properties including hydrophobicity, modulated contact angle and increased mechanical properties were observed.([60])”
Review of the recent developments in cellulose nanocomposite processing (2016, background): “The surface functionalization by acetylation [15,20], esterification [21,22], silanization [23], silylation [22,24], glyoxalization [25] or grafting of PCL [26], PEG [27] or GMA [28] on cellulose nanocrystals (CNCc) has, in some cases, improved the mechanical properties of PLA nanocomposites.”
Nanocellulose in biomedicine: Current status and future prospect (2014, background): “5 electron micrographs of sugar beet MFC (Adapted with permission from [5]), hardwood MFC (Adapted with permission from [6]), ramie CNC (Adapted with permission from [7]); and scanning electron micrographs of BC ribbons (Adapted with permission from [8]), nata-de-coco BC (Adapted with permission fro”