A study of pyrolysis conditions on carbon nanofiber properties produced from freeze-dried cellulose nanofibers

In the present work, carbon nanofibers were prepared by pyrolysis of freeze-dried cellulose nanofiber and the effect of pyrolysis conditions on the properties of carbon nanofiber was studied. SEM analysis revealed that slow heating rates below 400oC are critical to maintain the fibrous morphology after carbonization. The present study demonstrated the possibility of producing carbon nanofibers of ≤ 30 nm in diameter by a simple and scalable method.

Fabrication and characterisation of carbon nanofibres from cellulose nanofibres

Carbon nanofibers were fabricated by pyrolysis of plant-based cellulose nanofibers. The findings demonstrate the possibility of obtaining strong and commercially competitive carbon nanofibers that are used in many industries including aerospace, automobile and electronics.

Cellulose-based biodegradable blends and composites regenerated from ionic liquids

This thesis presents the fabrication of biodegradable polymer blends and composites with the assistance of ionic liquids. The work included preparation and characterization of cellulose/PCL blend films, cellulose/ PCL-PDMS-PCL blend films, cellulose/ PVAL blend films and cellulose/clay composite films. An efficient and feasible approach of reducing plastic pollution was developed.

Surface-sensitive method to determine calcium carbonate filler contents in cellulose matrices

This paper describes a method using attenuated total reflectance infra-red spectroscopy to determine the surface concentration of calcium carbonate in paper samples, by applying the linear relationship between the relative infra-red absorption integrals and the concentration. The method was able to detect micro-variations in the surface concentration and could also distinguish between different sheets as well as between the top and bottom side of one sheet. The samples were also split and the calcium carbonate concentration was determined within and compared to bulk calcium carbonate concentration determined from ash testing. The surface results were also compared with analysed scanning electron microscopy images generated from back-scattering electrons. The comparison shows that both sets of results are in excellent agreement. Depending on the sample, large errors (95% confidence) were observed. These, however, are caused by micro-variations of the surface concentration, rather than by inaccuracies of the technique, which is estimated to be less than 1%. Furthermore, measurements of various sample orientations suggest that anisotropic polarisation effects can be neglected. The method can be applied to paper and cellulose matrices having calcium carbonate filler contents of less than 50%. Due to spectral overlaps it is not suitable to determine kaolin filler contents.

Cellulose nanofibre textured SERS substrate

Poor reproducibility limits the wide uptake of low-cost surface enhanced Raman spectroscopy (SERS) substrates. This study reports a relatively low-cost and reproducible cellulose nanofibre (CNF) textured SERS substrate. Utilizing a layer of CNFs deposited onto glass slides, nanoscale roughness was achieved, which facilitated effective aggregation of gold nanoparticles (AuNPs) to form a novel CNF textured SERS substrate. This substrate meets the critical roughness requirements to control the distribution of AuNPs to provide 'hot spots' for SERS detection, offering significant signal enhancement. The reproducibility and accuracy of low-cost cellulosic SERS substrates were significantly improved on a model SERS molecule of 4-aminothiophenol.