Evaluation of joint formation on cellulosic surfaces

Abstract: Environmental issues are more and more present in our societies. Pollution engendered by plastic waste have drastically increased these past decades, causing several threats to the ecosystem. Therefore, the need of new biodegradable plastics to replace the actual petroleum-based ones is urgent. Cellulose could be a potential substitute since it is a biopolymer, abundant on Earth. However its properties have to be enhanced to be competitive towards actual plastics. The aim of the project is therefore to get a better understanding of cellulose-cellulose interactions. It focuses on the adhesion between cellulosic surfaces. Contact adhesion measurements have been performed on cellulose beads, with different treatments. All the beads had the same size and same concentration. Some of them were native whereas others were charged (600 µeq/g). Half of the native beads were surface modified with a starch coating or a Layer by Layer technique using cationic starch and an anionic polyelectrolyte (EXPN64 or FennoBond 85E). The project included preparation of the surface modified beads, pull-off tests, where load and position were recorded as a function of time, as well as measurements of the contact area. It was found that a higher energy was needed to separate charged and surface modified beads, especially the ones modified with EXPN 64, compared to native beads. The project have also shown that the types of beads influenced the contact area and the strength. However a trend was sometimes difficult to find. The data and results obtained in this project could be further re-used to enlarge the study field and investigate the influence of other parameters (size, concentration) on the adhesion of cellulose beads.