Fabrication of cellulose nanofiber transparent films for IT applications

Abstract

One of the abundant renewable biomaterials in the world – cellulose is produced from plants forming micro-fibrils which in turn aggregate of form cellulose fibers. These fibers size can be disintegrated from micro-fibrils to nanofibers by physical and chemical methods. Cellulose nanofibers (CNF) can be a new building block of renewable smart materials. The CNF has excellent mechanical strength, dimensional stability, thermal stability and good optical properties on top of their renewable behavior. This paper reports CNF transparent films made by CNF extracted by the physical method: a high pressure physical, so called aqueous counter collision method. Natural behaviors, extraction and film formation of CNF are explained and their characteristics are illustrated, which is suit for IT applications.