Social concerns for sustainable green products are encouraging the efficient exploitation of cellulose, the most abundant renewable biopolymer on earth. Because cellulose exists in plant cell walls as highly crystalline nanofibers with several nanometers width, the plant-based cellulose nanofibers display strong mechanical properties and have great potential for reinforcing polymer matrices. Currently the nanofibers can be isolated from various plant sources and we have also found an isolation method in which plant sources are ground in an undried state. The resultant nanofibers had a uniform width of approximately 15nm and a length of more than several micrometers (Figure 1).
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