Affiliations 

  • 1 Laboratory of Biocomposite Technology, Institute of Tropical Forestry and Forest Products (INTROP), Universiti Putra Malaysia, 43400 UPM Serdang, Selangor, Malaysia
  • 2 Surfactant Research Chair, Department of Chemistry, College of Science, King Saud University, P.O. Box 2455, Riyadh 11451, Saudi Arabia
  • 3 Centre for Biocomposites and Biomaterials Processing, Faculty of Forestry, University of Toronto, Toronto, Canada
  • 4 Laboratory of Biocomposite Technology, Institute of Tropical Forestry and Forest Products (INTROP), Universiti Putra Malaysia, 43400 UPM Serdang, Selangor, Malaysia; Chemical Engineering Department, College of Engineering, King Saud University, P.O. Box 2455, Riyadh 11451, Saudi Arabia. Electronic address: [email protected]
  • 5 Chemical Engineering Department, College of Engineering, King Saud University, P.O. Box 2455, Riyadh 11451, Saudi Arabia
Int J Biol Macromol, 2017 Apr;97:190-200.
PMID: 28082223 DOI: 10.1016/j.ijbiomac.2017.01.029

Abstract

Present study, deals about isolation and characterization of cellulose nanofibers (CNFs) from the Northern Bleached Softwood Kraft (NBSK) pulp, fabrication by hand lay-up technique and characterization of fabricated epoxy nanocomposites at different filler loadings (0.5%, 0.75%, 1% by wt.). The effect of CNFs loading on mechanical (tensile, impact and flexural), morphological (scanning electron microscope and transmission electron microscope) and structural (XRD and FTIR) properties of epoxy composites were investigated. FTIR analysis confirms the introduction of CNFs into the epoxy matrix while no considerable change in the crystallinity and diffraction peaks of epoxy composites were observed by the XRD patterns. Additions of CNFs considerably enhance the mechanical properties of epoxy composites but a remarkable improvement is observed for 0.75% CNFs as compared to the rest epoxy nanocomposites. In addition, the electron micrographs revealed the perfect distribution and dispersion of CNFs in the epoxy matrix for the 0.75% CNFs/epoxy nanocomposites, while the existence of voids and agglomerations were observed beyond 0.75% CNFs filler loadings. Overall results analysis clearly revealed that the 0.75% CNFs filler loading is best and effective with respect to rest to enhance the mechanical and structural properties of the epoxy composites.

* Title and MeSH Headings from MEDLINE®/PubMed®, a database of the U.S. National Library of Medicine.