Nanocellulose-PE-b-PEG copolymer nanohybrid shish-kebab structure via interfacial crystallization

Morganna Ochoa; Nina Collazos; Tuan Le; Ramalingam Subramaniam; Melanie Sanders; Raj Pal Singh; Dilip Depan

doi:10.1016/j.carbpol.2016.12.028

Nanocellulose-PE-b-PEG copolymer nanohybrid shish-kebab structure via interfacial crystallization

Carbohydr Polym. 2017 Mar 1:159:116-124. doi: 10.1016/j.carbpol.2016.12.028. Epub 2016 Dec 12.

Authors

Morganna Ochoa¹, Nina Collazos², Tuan Le³, Ramalingam Subramaniam⁴, Melanie Sanders⁵, Raj Pal Singh⁶, Dilip Depan⁷

Affiliations

¹ Department of Chemical Engineering, University of Louisiana at Lafayette, Lafayette, LA 70503, USA. Electronic address: mbo1041@louisiana.edu.
² Department of Chemical Engineering, University of Louisiana at Lafayette, Lafayette, LA 70503, USA. Electronic address: nyc3394@louisiana.edu.
³ Department of Chemical Engineering, University of Louisiana at Lafayette, Lafayette, LA 70503, USA. Electronic address: txl4675@louisiana.edu.
⁴ Department of Chemical Engineering, University of Louisiana at Lafayette, Lafayette, LA 70503, USA. Electronic address: raams@louisiana.edu.
⁵ Department of Chemical Engineering, University of Louisiana at Lafayette, Lafayette, LA 70503, USA. Electronic address: mds1074@louisiana.edu.
⁶ Advanced Research Center in Pharmaceutical Sciences and Applied Chemistry, Bharti Vidyapeeth University, Pune, India. Electronic address: rp.singh.ncl@gmail.com.
⁷ Department of Chemical Engineering, University of Louisiana at Lafayette, Lafayette, LA 70503, USA. Electronic address: ddepan@louisiana.edu.

PMID: 28038740
DOI: 10.1016/j.carbpol.2016.12.028

Abstract

We report a novel nanohybrid shish-kebab (NHSK) architecture of cellulose nanofibers (CNFs) and a block copolymer, (polyethylene-b-polyethylene glycol) (PE-b-PEG). Cellulose microfibers were ultrasonically dispersed to generate cellulose nanofibers in the size range of 50±10nm in diameter, while the block copolymer was crystallized using a solution crystallization approach to prepare NHSK. This unique approach allows the flocculated NHSK product to transfer quickly from toluene to ethanol, in order to shorten the preparation time. Morphological analysis reveals, for the first time, that nanocellulose can be used to induce crystallization of a block copolymer to generate NHSK and trans-crystalline structure. Scanning electron microscopy (SEM) and X-ray diffraction (XRD) results reveals the crystal morphology and crystallinity changes by virtue of crystallization. The ordered periodic growth and alignment of polymer crystals is recognized as the virtue of molecular origin of extended polymer chains. The proposed hypothesis affords elucidation of NHSK architecture and promotes the designing of novel nanohybrids with controllable functionality.

Keywords: Cellulose; Crystallization; Morphology; Nanohybrid shish-kebab; Polyethylene-b-polyethylene glycol.