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Cellulose nanocrystals from native and mercerized cotton

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Abstract

Nanocelluloses occur under various crystalline forms that are currently being selectively used for a wide variety of high performance materials. In the present study, two cellulose nanofibers (CF-I) were mercerized by alkaline treatment (CF-II) without degradation, the same molar mass of 560,000 g/mol was measured. Both samples were acid hydrolyzed, leading to cellulose nanocrystals in native (CNC-I) and mercerized (CNC-II) forms. This study focuses on the detailed characterization of these two nanoparticle morphologies (light and neutron scattering, TEM, AFM), surface chemistry (zetametry and surface charge), crystallinity (XRD, 13C NMR), and average molar mass coupled to chromatographic techniques (SEC–MALLS-RI, A4F-MALLS-RI), revealing variations in the packing of the crystalline domains. The crystal size of CNC-II is reduced by half compared to CNC-I, with molar masses of individual chains of 41,000 g/mol and 22,000 g/mol for CNC-I and CNC-II, respectively, whereas the same surface charge density is measured. This study gives an example of complementary characterization techniques as well as results to help decipher the mechanism involved in mercerization.

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Acknowledgments

The authors are grateful to Nadege Beury for AFM images and Emilie Perrin for TEM images with instruments from the BIBS platform (INRAE, Nantes, France), and to Laboratoire Léon Brillouin for providing neutron radiation facilities (CEA-Saclay, Gif sur Yvette, France). They are also grateful to Benoit Duchemin and Yoshiharu Nishiyama for their very stimulating discussions.

Funding

This project received funding from the French National Research Agency (ANR) (CELLOPLASM project, No. ANR-16-CE07-0003-03), including the PhD grant of SH. The authors are also grateful to INRAE for financial support.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. UR1268 Biopolymères Interactions Assemblages, INRAE, 44316, Nantes, France

    Somia Haouache, Clara Jimenez-Saelices, Xavier Falourd, Bruno Pontoire, Karine Cahier & Isabelle Capron

  2. Institut de Chimie des Milieux et Matériaux de Poitiers, Université de Poitiers, 86073, Poitiers, France

    Somia Haouache & François Jérome

  3. Laboratoire Léon Brillouin, CEA-Saclay, Université Paris-Saclay, Gif-sur-Yvette, France

    Fabrice Cousin

Authors
  1. Somia Haouache
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  2. Clara Jimenez-Saelices
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  3. Fabrice Cousin
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  4. Xavier Falourd
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  5. Bruno Pontoire
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  8. Isabelle Capron
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Correspondence to Isabelle Capron.

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Haouache, S., Jimenez-Saelices, C., Cousin, F. et al. Cellulose nanocrystals from native and mercerized cotton. Cellulose 29, 1567–1581 (2022). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10570-021-04313-8

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