Université de Fribourg

Biologically inspired hierarchical design of nanocomposites based on poly(ethylene oxide) and cellulose nanofibers

Changsarn, Sutheerat ; Mendez, James D. ; Shanmuganathan, Kadhiravan ; Foster, E. Johan ; Weder, Christoph ; Supaphol, Pitt

In: Macromolecular Rapid Communications, 2011, vol. 32, no. 17, p. 1367–1372

Attempts to create hierarchically structured, uniaxially oriented nanocomposites comprising cellulose nanowhiskers (CNWs), which promise anisotropic mechanical properties, are exceedingly rare. We report here the fabrication of uniaxially-oriented arrays of microfibers based on poly(ethylene oxide) (PEO) and CNWs by electrospinning. Compared with the neat PEO fibers, the incorporation of CNWs...

Université de Fribourg

Cellulose whisker/epoxy resin nanocomposites

Tang, Liming ; Weder, Christoph

In: ACS Applied Materials and Interfaces, 2010, vol. 2, no. 4, p. 1073-1080

New nanocomposites composed of cellulose nanofibers or “whiskers” and an epoxy resin were prepared. Cellulose whiskers with aspect ratios of ∼10 and ∼84 were isolated from cotton and sea animals called tunicates, respectively. Suspensions of these whiskers in dimethylformamide were combined with an oligomeric difunctional diglycidyl ether of bisphenol A with an epoxide equivalent weight...