| Over the last two decades, a large amount of research has focused on natural cellulose fibers, since they are "green" and renewable raw materials. Recently, nanomaterials science has attracted wide attention due to the large surface area and unique properties of nanoparticles. Cellulose certainly is becoming an important material in nanomaterials science, with the increasing demand of environmentally friendly materials.;In this work, a novel method of preparing cellulose nanofibers (CNF) is being presented. This method contains up to three oxidation steps: periodate, chlorite and TEMPO (2,2,6,6-tetramethylpiperidinyl-1-oxyl) oxidation. The first two oxidation steps are investigated in the first part of this work. Cellulose pulp was oxidized to various extents by a two step-oxidation with sodium periodate, followed by sodium chlorite. The oxidized products can be separated into three different fractions. The mass ratio and charge content of each fraction were determined. The morphology, size distribution and crystallinity index of each fraction were measured by AFM, DLS and XRD, respectively.;In the second part of this work, CNF were prepared and modified under various conditions, including (1) the introduction of various amounts of aldehyde groups onto CNF by periodate oxidation; (2) the carboxyl groups in sodium form on CNF were converted to acid form by treated with an acid type ion-exchange resin; (3) CNF were cross-linked in two different ways by employing adipic dihydrazide (ADH) as cross-linker and water-soluble 1-ethyl-3-[3-(dimethylaminopropyl)] carbodiimide (EDC) as carboxyl-activating agent. Films were fabricated with these modified CNF suspensions by vacuum filtration. The optical, mechanical and thermo-stability properties of these films were investigated by UV-visible spectrometry, tensile test and thermogravimetric analysis (TGA). Water vapor transmission rates (WVTR) and water contact angle (WCA) of these films were also studied. |
