New Aspects of Cellulose Nanofibers

Abstract

Recent advancements in "nano-technology" have been modifying our conventional concepts of material sciences and developments. Nano-technology also strongly influences natural biomass products. In general, hierarchical structures of bio-based materials are built up through self-assembly of molecules and are followed by nano-assembly further up to a higher-level structure. The key process for each step is formation of the interactions at the individual sizes. Nature usually performs such a bottom-up process to fabricate a product. On the contrary, we have another direction that is a top-down process. In fact, various methods are now under development as a downsized method. This review attempts to describe the trend of nanofiber technology for cellulose from the viewpoints of fundamentals and recent techniques. Further, our recent technique, nano-pulverization by the aqueous counter collision, successfully decomposes the interactions selectively without any damage to the molecular structure, and finally liberates the components at various sizes into water to provide a transparent and homogeneous component/water system. This method will also be briefly introduced.