Abstract:
The research of nanofibers and nanofibrillated cellulose was undertaken by the FBRI team. The Cole/Fort group plans to study the chemical modification of these materials so that functionalized fibers can be produced and effectively incorporated into new polymers and composites. To prevent the hydrophilic behavior of the single chain polymer because of the hydroxyl groups, the cellulose will be chemically modified to decrease its hydrophilicity.
One of the routes of investigation of the cellulose nanofibers and nanofibrillated cellulose functionality is to introduce organosilicon compounds that are notable for their derivatizing and protecting properties and also serve as intermediates in organic synthesis. Particularly, the silylation process is employed, in which alkoxysilanes bind to the cellulose polymer chain and thus eliminate the hydroxyl groups.
Other routes involve functionalization methodologies for the end groups. For example, free aldehyde functional groups at the end of the cellulose chain should undergo, presumably, reductive amination be means of coupling with water soluble poly(ethylene) glycols so the amine groups can be introduced. Reactions with hydrazinobenzoic acid should introduce carboxyl groups that can be further converted into polymers and polyesters.
In this project the methods described by Abdelmouleh et al.1 (2005) will be followed to react several silanes2 with cellulose, which is enzymatically obtained from Whatman #1 filter paper. The resulting modified fibers will be characterized using a variety of techniques such as Inverse GC, optical microscopy, FT-IR. Several silylating reagents will be investigated.

Interview with Tatyana Khamathutova-Tomlin on July 14, 2008 (7:25 minutes)