Revealing the autofluorescence properties of nanocellulose isolated from different raw materials by different methods

Abstract

This work explored the autofluorescence properties of nanocellulose which isolated from different raw materials (dissolving pulp, bleaching chemical pulp) using acid hydrolysis, mechanically refining and TEMPO oxidation. Results showed that all samples show a typical emission peak at 574 nm due to glycosidic linkages and aliphatic C=O absorption identified by FTIR and Raman spectroscopy independent of lignin. Increasing the excitation wavelengths (510-530 nm) caused red shift of fluorescence emission peaks (570-582nm) with unchanged fluorescence intensity. Conversely, changing acid/alkaline conditions led to an increase of fluorescence intensity with no shifting of fluorescence emission peak.This study provides new insight in applying nanocellulose with special luminous characteristics in biomedicine area such as multi-color biological imaging.