Tailor-made polymeric nanoparticles for surface engineering of cellulose nanofibrils to create nanostructured materials

Cellulose nanofibrils (CNFs) bring about promising material properties, such as high modulus, but suffer for instance from low strain-at-break in the dry state.

The addition of tailor-made polymeric nanoparticles (PNPs), having an electrolyte corona to attach to the anionically charged CNFs by electrostatic interactions, have been demonstrated to alter the properties, presumably by controlling the interfacial properties.

The scope of the present project is to investigate how the nanostructuring of CNFs and PNPs in nanocomposites influence the mechanical properties.

The colloidally stable PNPs, self-stabilized by the electrolyte corona, will be synthesized by a process denoted ‘polymerization-induced self-assembly’ using a controlled radical polymerization. The properties of the corona and the core can be controlled by the choice of monomers. The project will be conducted as a PhD-project (4 yrs) strengthened by a 1-yr post-doc.

The applicants provide expertise in polymer synthesis (Malmström) and fiber technology/cellulose nanofibrils (Wågberg) and the project will work closely with an expert on characterization on nanostructuring (Roth).

The project will comprise design and synthesis of PNPs, fibrillation of cellulose to form CNFs, manufacturing of nanocomposites (wet-mixing, layer-by-layer fabrication, etc), evaluation of mechanical properties and characterization of nanostructuring (SAXS/WAXS etc). Mechanistic insights and novel CNFs-PNPs-nanomaterials will be attained.