2017/05/17 by Gustav Nyström, Jozef Adamcik, Nyström, Gustav +8
Engineering · Materials Science · Physics and Astronomy · #Advanced Cellulose Research Studies #FOS: Physical sciences #Material Properties and Processing #Pickering emulsions and particle stabilization #Soft Condensed Matter (cond-mat.soft) #cond-mat.soft
paper · pdf · doi:10.48550/arxiv.1705.06620
arxiv created 2017/05/17 · openalex publication_date 2017/05/17 · arxiv updated 2017/05/19 · openalex created_date 2022/10/02 · openalex updated_date 2026/07/28
Understanding how nanostructure and nanomechanics influence physical material properties on the micro- and macroscale is an essential goal in soft condensed matter research. Mechanisms governing fragmentation and chirality inversion of filamentous colloids are of specific interest because of their critical role in load-bearing and self-organizing functionalities of soft nanomaterials. Here we provide a fundamental insight into the self-organization across several length scales of nanocellulose, an important bio-colloid system with wide-ranging applications as structural, insulating and functional material. Through a combined microscopic and statistical analysis of nanocellulose fibrils at the single particle level, we show how mechanically and chemically induced fragmentation proceed in this system. Moreover, by studying the bottom-up self-assembly of fragmented carboxylated cellulose nanofibrils into cholesteric liquid crystals, we show via direct microscopic observations, that the chirality is inverted from right-handed at the nanofibril level to left-handed at the level of the liquid crystal phase. These results improve our fundamental understanding of nanocellulose and provide an important rationale for their application in colloidal systems, liquid crystals and nanomaterials.