Individual cotton cellulose nanofibers: pretreatment and fibrillation technique

We report a method to fibrillate raw dried cotton fibers into individual cellulose nanofibers (CNFs) by chemical purification (removal of non-cellulosic components) and pretreatment by a high-speed blender (breaking down the fiber structures) combined with high-pressure homogenization (nanofibrillation). The resultant CNFs were found to have a width of approximately 10-30 nm and high aspect ratios. The high light transmittance of the CNF/acrylic resin composite indicated that our treatment successfully disintegrated the raw cotton fibers into uniform CNFs. The cotton CNFs were found to have the advantages of high crystallinity and thermal stability.