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Humidity sensitive cellulose composite aerogels with enhanced mechanical performance

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Abstract

It is a long-standing issue to develop conductive polymer composites as humidity sensor with rapid response, high reproducibility and good long-term stability. Herein, a simple, efficient, and environmentally benign strategy was proposed to fabricate highly porous, robust and conductive cellulose composite aerogels. Owing to the intrinsic high specific surface area and well-defined electrically conductive network, the as-prepared cellulose composite aerogels were highly sensitive to water vapor with a relative resistance response value of as high as ~ 1000% at a CNT loading of 0.19 vol%. The dense hydrogen bonding network endowed high reproducibility and good long-term stability to cellulose composite aerogels. Moreover, a significant improvement in the mechanical properties of cellulose composite aerogels was achieved, outperforming neat cellulose aerogel with the increments of ~ 149.2% and ~ 242.1% in compressive strength and modulus, respectively. The green, robust, highly sensitive cellulose composite aerogels are in great potential need as humidity sensors in biology and automated industrial processes.

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Acknowledgments

The authors gratefully acknowledge financial support from the National Key Research and development Program of China (Grant No. 2018YFB0704200), the National Natural Science Foundation of China (Grant Nos. 51803140, 51973141, 51533004, and 21776186), the Science and Technology Department of Sichuan Province (Grant No. 2018JY0584), the State Key Laboratory of Polymer Materials Engineering (Grant No. sklpme2019-2-06) and the Fundamental Research Funds for the Central Universities (yj201795).

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. College of Polymer Science and Engineering, State Key Laboratory of Polymer Materials Engineering, Sichuan University, Chengdu, 610065, People’s Republic of China

    Chun-Yan Liu, Shi-Peng Chen, Ling Xu, Hua-Dong Huang, Gan-Ji Zhong & Zhong-Ming Li

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  1. Chun-Yan Liu
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  2. Shi-Peng Chen
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  3. Ling Xu
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  4. Hua-Dong Huang
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  6. Zhong-Ming Li
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Correspondence to Ling Xu or Hua-Dong Huang.

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Liu, CY., Chen, SP., Xu, L. et al. Humidity sensitive cellulose composite aerogels with enhanced mechanical performance. Cellulose 27, 6287–6297 (2020). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10570-020-03171-0

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