Nanocellulose in Spun Continuous Fibers: A Review and Future Outlook

Continuous fibers are commonly manufactured for a wide variety of uses such as filters, textiles, and composites. For example, most fibrous reinforcements (e.g., carbon fiber, glass fiber) for advanced composites are continuous fibers or yarns, fabrics, and preforms made from them. This allows broad flexibility in design and manufacturing approaches by controlling fiber orientation and architecture. However, there has been growing interest in preparing continuous fibers from biobased materials such as plants. Of particular recent interest are nanocelluloses, which are projected to be less expensive than many other nanomaterials and have the potential to be produced in large volumes. They also have an impressive strength-to-weight ratio and have so far shown few environmental, health, and safety concerns in their unmodified state. However, efficient and effective use of nanocellulose in continuous fibers is challenging and a variety of approaches have been explored in which nanocellulose dispersions are either spun directly or in combination with polymers. Methods such as wet spinning, dry spinning, melt spinning, and electrospinning have been investigated. To better understand the body of knowledge of this new and growing area, various approaches are reviewed and a perspective on what the future holds is provided.