Abstract
Aerogels are materials comprising hierarchical designs and are of growing significance to acquire advanced structure-based functionality in future technical applications. Since the researchers have previously focused on a single freeze-casting strategy in the fabrication of aerogels, the correlation between processing routes and their integrated characteristics could not be determined. Herein, we constructed cellulose nanofiber (CNF)/chitosan (CS) based composite aerogels (CCSA) by employing random and directional freeze-casting strategies. The effect of such techniques has been explored as a source of an integrated freeze-cast dried porous structure. Random freeze-dried aerogels (r-CCSA) exhibited isotropic properties with high porosity (99.6%) and large pore volume (2.71 mL/g). Whereas, controlled freeze ice-cast nucleation endowed the directional aerogels with ultra-low thermal conductivity (0.027 Wm−1 K−1) in the radial direction and about 20% greater (0.033 Wm−1 K−1) in the axial direction. Moreover, high BET-specific surface area (342 m2/g) and 60% strain adherence was observed for these anisotropic aerogels. This composite bio-mass aerogel preparation approach can offer a clear insight into the adoption of the right methodology considering the potential applications and environmental safety.
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Competing interest
The authors declare no competing financial interest.
Abbreviations
- CNF:
-
Cellulose nanofibers
- CS:
-
Chitosan
- CCSA:
-
Cellulose-chitosan hybrid aerogel
- r-CCSA:
-
Randomly freeze-dried cellulose-chitosan aerogel
- u-CCSA:
-
Uni-directional freeze-dried cellulose-chitosan aerogel
- b-CCSA:
-
Bi-directional freeze-dried cellulose-chitosan aerogel
- SBET :
-
BET specific surface area
- PDMS:
-
Polydimethylsiloxane
- PTFE:
-
Polytetrafluoroethylene
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This work was supported by the National Key R&D Program of China (Project No. 2018YFC2000900).
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The manuscript was written through the contributions of all authors. Aneeba Chaudary carried out the experiments and accomplished writing work; Mohammed Kayes Patoary, Meiling Zhang, Tayba Chudhary and Amjad Farooq provided language help during writing; Lifang Liu helped in writing and proofreading the manuscript. All authors have approved the final version of the manuscript.
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Chaudary, A., Patoary, M.K., Zhang, M. et al. Structurally integrated thermal management of isotropic and directionally ice-templated nanocellulose/chitosan aerogels. Cellulose 29, 8265–8282 (2022). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10570-022-04781-6
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10570-022-04781-6