Cellulose nanocrystals (CNCs) have been around for awhile now just like how we have had carbon nanotubes (CNTs) and graphene.
These nanoparticles offer really a interesting strength to weight ratio and a relatively easily modified surface compared to CNTs. The article posted here is misleading due to the relatively high cost of the CNCs to isolate and then use in what looks to be an under cured epoxy resin.
Isolating the CNCs potentially can be done through mechanical means, but I suspect the authors here were using chemical isolation through some sort of acid hydrolysis (they don't say in the abstract).
But overall mixing the CNCs at that weight ratio with an epoxy resin should have yielded 1-3 GPa modulus or higher and the fact that they got 0.66 to me indicates it's under cured and not really that useful.
I actually worked on this stuff when I was in graduate school and we were doing surface modified CNCs with a biobased epoxy resin. We loaded at 1-10 wt% of CNCs and got modulus values between 2-3 GPa with some modest increases in Tg. We were expecting better results, but that's life.
This to me seems like MIT is trying to toot their own horn for some not very interesting results.
These nanoparticles offer really a interesting strength to weight ratio and a relatively easily modified surface compared to CNTs. The article posted here is misleading due to the relatively high cost of the CNCs to isolate and then use in what looks to be an under cured epoxy resin.
Isolating the CNCs potentially can be done through mechanical means, but I suspect the authors here were using chemical isolation through some sort of acid hydrolysis (they don't say in the abstract).
But overall mixing the CNCs at that weight ratio with an epoxy resin should have yielded 1-3 GPa modulus or higher and the fact that they got 0.66 to me indicates it's under cured and not really that useful.
I actually worked on this stuff when I was in graduate school and we were doing surface modified CNCs with a biobased epoxy resin. We loaded at 1-10 wt% of CNCs and got modulus values between 2-3 GPa with some modest increases in Tg. We were expecting better results, but that's life.
This to me seems like MIT is trying to toot their own horn for some not very interesting results.
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