Cellulose Based Nanocomposites with Improved Properties Prepared by Selectively Dissolving Plant Cellulose in Ionic Liquids

摘要

During the past several years,it has been reported that some room temperature ionic liquids (RTILs) exhibited powerful dissolving capability for cellulose.RTILs are providing a new and powerful platform for cellulose processing and functionalization,which has become the focus of cellulose chemistry research in recent years[1-7].In our resent work,the solution morphology and dissolution process of cellulose in RTILs have been visualized directly by conventional transmission electron microscopy (TEM) at room temperature[8].The structure evolution of cellulose during its dissolution in RTILs can be divided into following stages:dissolution of noncrystalline structure,swelling and exfoliation crystalline structure,and dissolution of highly crystalline cellulose nanofibrils.