Speaker
Dr
Heike Ehmann
(Anton Paar)
Description
Cellulose is the main building block of trees and plants and the most abundant biopolymer in the world. It consists of highly ordered domains (nano crystals) and amorphous regions. These cellulose nanocrystals (CNC) have received significant interest due to their mechanical, optical, chemical, and rheological properties. CNC primarily obtained from naturally occurring cellulose fibers are biodegradable and renewable in nature and hence they serve as a sustainable and environmentally friendly material for most applications. These nanocrystals are basically hydrophilic in nature; however, they can be surface functionalized to meet various challenging requirements. The focus in this talk will be the structural characterization of CNC in different environments with small angle X-ray scattering (SAXS). It is employed to characterize the structure and shape of those crystallites directly after acid hydrolysis. Further, the rod-like crystallites are deposited and dried on different substrates and analysed using grazing incidence small angle X-ray scattering (GISAXS) and grazing incidence X-ray diffraction (GIXD).
Primary author
Dr
Heike Ehmann
(Anton Paar)
Co-authors
Dr
Andreas Keilbach
(Anton Paar)
Dr
Stefan Spirk
(TU Graz)
