Open Access

ARTICLE

Characterization of Cellulose Nanocrystals Grafted with Organic Acid Chloride of Different Sizes

Aparecido Junior de Menezes^1,3,*, Elson Longo², Fábio Lima Leite¹, Alain Dufresne³

1 Department of Physics, Chemistry and Mathematics (DFQM), Federal University of São Carlos, 18052-780, Sorocaba, Brazil
2 Institute of Chemistry (IQ), São Paulo State University, Araraquara, Brazil
3 Laboratory of Pulp and Paper Engineering, (LGP2) Grenoble-INP PAGORA, 461 rue de la Papeterie CS10065 - 38402 Saint Martin d’Hères Cedex, France

* Corresponding Author:

Journal of Renewable Materials 2014, 2(4), 306-313. https://doi.org/10.7569/JRM.2014.634121

Received 26 August 2014; Accepted 02 November 2014;

Abstract

In the work presented in this article surface chemical modifi cation was applied to ramie cellulose nanocrystals by grafting organic acid chlorides presenting different lengths of the aliphatic chain. The objective of this surface chemical treatment was to enhance the nonpolar nature of the grafted nanocrystals and improve their dispersibility in a nonpolar polymeric matrix. The occurrence of the chemical modifi cation was evaluated by Fourier transform infrared (FTIR) spectroscopy, the degree of crystallinity by X-ray diffraction, and the morphology by scanning electron microscopy with fi eld emission gun (FEG-SEM) and atomic force microscopy (AFM). The morphology and crystallinity provided by different experimental methods were carefully compared.

---

Keywords

---