Towards Biomimicking Wood: Fabricated Free-standing Films of Nanocellulose, Lignin, and a Synthetic PolycationKarthik Pillai 1,2,3, Fernando Navarro Arzate 2,4, Wei Zhang 2,5, Scott Renneckar 1,2,5,6
1Institute for Critical Technology and Applied Science, Virginia Tech, 2Macromolecules and Interfaces Institute, Virginia Tech, 3Institute for Food Safety and Health, Illinois Institute of Technology- Moffett Campus, 4Wood, Cellulose, and Paper Research Department, University of Guadalajara, 5Department of Sustainable Biomaterials, Virginia Tech, 6Sustainable Nanotechnology Interdisciplinary Graduate Education Program, Virginia Tech
The objective of this research was to form synthetic plant cell wall tissue using layer-by-layer assembly of nanocellulose fibrils and isolated lignin assembled from dilute aqueous suspensions. Surface measurement techniques of quartz crystal microbalance and atomic force microscopy were used to monitor the formation of the polymer-polymer nanocomposite material.
