Civil Engineering Reference
In-Depth Information
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Cellulose Nanocrystals: Nanostrength for
Industrial and Biomedical Applications
Anuj Kumar and Yuvraj Singh Negi
*
Department of Polymer and Process Engineering, Indian Institute of Technology, Roorkee, India
Abstract
In recent years, green materials have attracted great attention in the development of biode-
gradable or plant-derived green composites for minimizing the generation of pollution. For
this advancement, the use of renewable materials such as cellulose (the most abundant bio-
polymer) is becoming impellent because of the great demand for alternatives to unrenewable
petroleum materials and also because it is good reinforcing material due to its availability, low
cost, low density, nontoxicity, low abrasiveness, biocompatibility and biodegradability. In this
regard, there has been signii cant interest in cellulose nanocrystals as potential nanoi llers for
nanocomposites due to their nanoscale dimension (very high surface area-to-volume ratio) and
impressive mechanical properties (or nanostrength) which can be imparted to desired nanocom-
posites. h erefore, this chapter discusses extensive research developments for next generation
in the i eld of cellulose nanocrystals-based nanocomposites, thus producing nanocomposites
which are particularly important for new industrial and bioapplications in health care systems.
Keywords:
Cellulose nanocrystals , acid-hydrolysis , nanocomposites , mechanical properties ,
biopolymers
15.1
Introduction
h e development of high-performance materials made from natural resources has
been increasing worldwide due to environment and sustainability issues. Remarkable
achievements have been witnessed in green technology of nanomaterials in the i eld
of materials science, including the development of biocomposites. Biocomposites and
biobased polymers used in biocomposites are relatively new growing applications
in the industrial market concerning environmental and disposal issues. For these rea-
sons, polymers derived from plants have been gaining attention due to their availability,
low cost, environmental compatibility, superior physical properties, etc. Plants have
three major components such as cellulose (most abundant organic biopolymer world-
wide), hemicellulose and lignin, which have been used for dif erent applications such
