Abstract
Polymeric wood hemicelluloses are depicted to join cellulose, starch and chitosan as key polysaccharides for sustainable materials engineering. However, the approaches to incorporate hemicelluloses in emerging bio-based products are challenged by lack of specific benefit, other than the biomass-origin, although their utilization would contribute to sustainable material use since they currently are a side stream that is not valorized. Here we demonstrate wood-xylans as swelling modifiers for neutral and charged nanocellulose films that have already entered the sustainable packaging applications, however, suffer from humidity sensitivity. The oxidative modification is used to modulate the water-solubility of xylan and hence enable adsorption in an aqueous environment. A high molecular weight grade, hence less water-soluble, adsorbed preferentially on the neutral surface while the adsorbed amount on a negatively charged surface was independent of the molecular weight, and hence, solubility. The adsorption of the oxidized xylans on a neutral cellulose surface resulted in an increase in the amount of water in the film while on the negatively charged cellulose the total amount of water decreased. The finding of synergy of two hygroscopic materials to decrease swelling in hydrophilic bio-polymer films demonstrates the oxidized macromolecule xylan as structurally functional component in emerging cellulose products.
Highlights
The global increase in the consumption of plastic materials and dispose rate has created a need to transfer from non-renewable feedstock to renewable ones, without compromising food supply or land use
Hardwood hemicelluloses provide xylans as dominant component while softwood hemicelluloses are rich in glucomannans
Adsorption of oxidized xylans on cellulose film is elaborated with quartz crystal microbalance with dissipation monitoring (QCM-D) and surface plasmon resonance (SPR) with focus on revealing the changes in film swelling upon introduction of the hemicellulose additives
Summary
The global increase in the consumption of plastic materials and dispose rate has created a need to transfer from non-renewable feedstock to renewable ones, without compromising food supply or land use. The cellulose microfibrils can contribute to a new generation of packaging material [3,4,5,6]. Despite the increasing interest towards the intrinsic properties of wood hemicelluloses, there are few demonstrations of their use in materials engineering, for example in packaging [26,28,29]. Adsorption of oxidized xylans on cellulose film is elaborated with quartz crystal microbalance with dissipation monitoring (QCM-D) and surface plasmon resonance (SPR) with focus on revealing the changes in film swelling upon introduction of the hemicellulose additives. Our findings of increasing macromolecular wood-xylan solubility, of incorporating it to emerging cellulose products and identifying a structural functionality contribute towards new class of biological macromolecules for sustainable engineering
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