Cellulose nanofibrils aerogels generated from jute fibers

•The cellulose nanofibrils aerogels were generated from jute fibers.•The jute nanofibrils have a diameter from 5 to 20 nm and several micron length.•The cellulose aerogels have controllably hierarchical 3D porous structures.•The cellulose nanofibrils aerogels are coexistence of cellulose I and cellulose II.

In this work, we report the cellulose nanofibrils extracted from the pristine jute fibers via the pretreatments followed by the TEMPO (2,2,6,6-tetramethylpiperidine-1-oxyl radical)-mediated oxidation and mechanical disintegration. The effects of pretreatments by using the NaOH solution and dimethyl sulfoxide solvent on the fiber morphology and macro/micro-structures were investigated by polarizing microscope and synchrotron radiation wide/small-angle X-ray scattering (WAXS/SAXS). The cellulose nanofibrils exhibit a diameter ranging from 5 nm to 20 nm and a length of several micrometers, which have been assembled into cellulose aerogels by the lyophilization of as-prepared nanofibrils dispersions with various concentrations. The results indicated that the hierarchical structures of as-prepared cellulose aerogels were dependent on the dispersion concentrations. The WAXS results show that the typical cellulose aerogels are coexistence of cellulose I and cellulose II, which has a great promise for many potential applications, such as pharmaceutical, liquid filtration, catalysts, bio-nanocomposites, and tissue engineering scaffolds.

Graphical abstractThe nanofibrils with a diameter ranging from 5 nm to 20 nm and a length of several micrometers were successfully extracted from the pretreated jute fibers via a simple approach, which have been used as the building blocks for the construction of cellulose nanofibrils aerogel with controllably hierarchical three-dimensional porous structures.Figure optionsDownload full-size imageDownload as PowerPoint slide