Cellulose "nanopaper" as building blocks for sustainable materials

不断增加的能源成本、沉重的立法压力、消费者对环境友好型产品的需求、碳中和技术和可持续发展的未来都引发了对绿色（er）材料的研究和开发的新兴趣。在这种情况下，纤维素纳米纤维被认为是生产高性能可持续复合材料的主要候选材料。然而，单根纤维素纳米纤维的高拉伸刚度（高达160 GPa）和强度（至少1 GPa）尚未在复合材料中得到充分利用。许多研究人员已经制造出细菌纤维素（BC）或纳米原纤化纤维素（NFC）增强的聚合物复合材料。虽然这些研究显示了纳米纤维素改善聚合物基质的机械性能的能力，但这些纳米复合材料中的许多仍然表现得比PLA差或与PLA相当，PLA是以合理的价格商购的性能最高的生物衍生聚合物之一。该项目旨在开发下一代纳米纤维素增强聚合物，应用绿色工程原理，减少溶剂和能源的使用，并引入简单的制造概念，生产可持续的纳米复合材料，真正为大批量结构应用提供高性能。为了实现这一目标，该项目将集中使用：（i）超低克重或（ii）高性能纤维素“纳米纸”作为可持续复合材料的构建块。可以预见，这种真正的绿色和高性能的纳米纤维复合材料将在例如复合材料、塑料电子和柔性显示器工业中找到更广泛的应用。

Increasing energy cost, heavy legislative pressures, consumer's demand for environmental friendlier products, carbon neutral technologies and a sustainable future have all triggered fresh interest in research and development of green(er) materials. In this context, cellulose nanofibres are regarded as the prime candidate for the production of high performance sustainable composites. However, the high tensile stiffness (up to 160 GPa) and strength (at least 1 GPa) of a single cellulose nanofibre has yet to be fully exploited in composite materials. Numerous researchers have already manufactured bacterial cellulose (BC)- or nanofibrillated cellulose (NFC)-reinforced polymer composites. Whilst these studies showed the ability of nanocellulose to improve the mechanical performance of polymer matrices, many of these nanocomposites still performed worse than or only equally well compared to PLA, which is one of the highest performing bio-derived polymers that is commercially available at a reasonable price. This proposed project aims to develop the next generation of nanocellulose-reinforced polymers applying green engineering principles to reduce the use of solvents and energy, as well as introduce simple manufacturing concepts to produce sustainable nanocomposites that are truly high performance for high volume structural applications. To achieve this, this project will concentrate on the use of: (i) ultra-low grammage or (ii) high performance cellulose "nanopapers" as the building blocks for sustainable composite materials. It can be anticipated that such truly green and high performance nanofibre composites will find wider applications for instance in the composite, plastic electronics and flexible display industries.