Best Practice for Reporting Wet Mechanical Properties of Nanocellulose-Based Materials.

Andreas Walther, Francisco Lossada, Tobias Benselfelt, Konstantin Kriechbaum, Lars Berglund, Olli Ikkala, Tsuguyuki Saito, Lars Wågberg, Lennart Bergström

Journal: Biomacromolecules 2021;21(6):2536-2540

PMID: 32233473

Full Text on American Chemical Society View on PubMed

Abstract

Nanocellulose-based materials and nanocomposites show extraordinary mechanical properties with high stiffness, strength, and toughness. Although the last decade has witnessed great progress in understanding the mechanical properties of these materials, a crucial challenge is to identify pathways to introduce high wet strength, which is a critical parameter for commercial applications. Because of the waterborne fabrication methods, nanocellulose-based materials are prone to swelling by both adsorption of moist air or liquid water. Unfortunately, there is currently no best practice on how to take the swelling into account when reporting mechanical properties at different relative humidity or when measuring the mechanical properties of fully hydrated materials. This limits and in parts fully prevents comparisons between different studies. We review current approaches and propose a best practice for measuring and reporting mechanical properties of wet nanocellulose-based materials, highlighting the importance of swelling and the correlation between mechanical properties and volume expansion.

Address: A3BMS Lab, Institute for Macromolecular Chemistry, University of Freiburg, Stefan-Meier-Straße 31, 79104 Freiburg, Germany.; DFG Cluster of Excellence "Living, Adaptive and Energy-Autonomous Materials Systems" (livMatS), 79110 Freiburg, Germany.; Freiburg Materials Research Center, University of Freiburg, Stefan-Meier-Straße 21, 79104 Freiburg, Germany.; Freiburg Center for Interactive Materials and Bioinspired Technologies, University of Freiburg, Georges-Köhler-Allee 105, 79110 Freiburg, Germany.; Department of Fibre and Polymer Technology, KTH Royal Institute of Technology, 10044 Stockholm, Sweden.; Wallenberg Wood Science Center, KTH Royal Institute of Technology, 10044 Stockholm, Sweden.; Department of Materials and Environmental Chemistry, Stockholm University, Arrhenius Laboratory, Svante Arrhenius väg 16 C, 106 91 Stockholm, Sweden.; Molecular Materials, Department of Applied Physics, Aalto University, Puumiehenkuja 2, 02150 Espoo, Finland.; Department of Biomaterial Sciences, Graduate School of Agricultural and Life Sciences, The University of Tokyo, 1-1-1 Yayoi, Bunkyo-ku, Tokyo 113-8657, Japan.

DOI: 10.1021/acs.biomac.0c00330

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MeSH Terms: Cellulose, Nanocomposites, Water