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Multifunctional ultralight nanocellulose aerogels as excellent broadband acoustic absorption materials

  • Polymers & biopolymers
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Abstract

Noise pollution has become one of the environmental hazards in parallel with air pollution, water pollution, and solid waste pollution worldwide. Cellulose aerogel is a new porous sound-absorbing material that is highly efficient, green, recyclable, and degradable, showing bright prospect for the application in noise suppression. In this study, we fabricated multifunctional acoustic absorptive cellulose nanocrystal (CNC) aerogels by employing calcium chloride as the green crosslinker of CNC, followed by freeze drying. The as-prepared CNC aerogels exhibit excellent broadband acoustic absorption performance with a high maximum absorption coefficient of 0.99 (at 2960 Hz), an average absorption coefficient of 0.85 (in the range of 600–6400 Hz), and a wide absorption bandwidth of 4673 Hz with the absorption coefficient greater than 0.8. The dissipation mechanism of sound energy in the fabricated CNC aerogels is predicted by a designed porous media model. Moreover, good thermal stability, ultralight property (density of 0.036 g/cm3), and high diffuse reflection characteristics (average diffuse reflectance of 98.17% for light) of these CNC aerogels were demonstrated as well. Such versatile aerogel materials not only pave the way for the development of sustainable and efficient acoustic absorption materials, but also have great potential applications in broad fields including construction, transportation, and environment acoustics.

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Data availability

The data that support the findings of this study are available from the corresponding authors upon reasonable request.

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Acknowledgements

This work was supported by the Yunnan Fundamental Research Projects (Grant Nos. 202201AU070036, 202101BA070001-175, and 202101BA070001-162), the National Natural Science Foundation of China (Grant Nos. 52261009 and 12165010), the Science Foundation of the National Laboratory of Solid State Microstructures, the Science Foundation of Kunming University (Grant No. YJL20014), the Key Laboratory of Artificial Microstructures in Yunnan Higher Education Institutions, the Program for Innovative Research Team in Kunming University, and the Cooperation Program of XDU-Chongqing IC Innovation Research Institute (Grant No. CQIRI-2022CXY-Z07).

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. School of Physics Science and Technology, Kunming University, Kunming, 650214, China

    Ju-Qi Ruan, Kai-Yue Xie, Wei Guo, Qing-Yuan Chen & Houyin Li

  2. School of Microelectronics, Xidian University, Xi’an, 710126, China

    Zhaoxi Li & Chunlong Fei

  3. Faculty of Materials Science and Engineering, Kunming University of Science and Technology, Kunming, 650093, China

    Xiaoqing Zuo

  4. National Laboratory of Solid State Microstructures, Nanjing University, Nanjing, 210093, China

    Ming-Hui Lu

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  1. Ju-Qi Ruan
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Contributions

JQR and QYC contributed to conceptualization and design; all authors were involved in data curation and formal analysis; investigation and methodology; and manuscript writing and editing; JQR, WG, and XZ contributed to funding acquisition; and JQR, CF, and MHL were involved in project administration and supervision.

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Correspondence to Ju-Qi Ruan or Chunlong Fei.

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Ruan, JQ., Xie, KY., Li, Z. et al. Multifunctional ultralight nanocellulose aerogels as excellent broadband acoustic absorption materials. J Mater Sci 58, 971–982 (2023). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10853-022-08118-3

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