Fundamentals of water as a solvent could lead to greener cellulose-based products

Date:
May 3, 2023
Source:
North Carolina State University
Summary:
Water can change its solubility characteristics depending upon
what it interacts with.


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FULL STORY ========================================================================== Water isn't just a universal solvent that remains unaffected by its interactions. New publications from North Carolina State University show
that water can change its solubility characteristics depending upon what
it interacts with. Specifically, when water interacts with cellulose,
it can stack in layered shells to control chemical reactions within,
and physical properties of, the material. The work has implications for
more sustainable and efficient design of cellulose-based products.

"Cellulose is the world's most abundant biopolymer, and it's used in applications that range from bandages to electronics," says Lucian
Lucia, professor of forest biomaterials and chemistry at NC State and corresponding author of a new study in Matter. "But cellulose processing
has been mostly done by trial and error, and some of it utilizes
incredibly harsh chemicals. To find better ways to process cellulose,
we need to understand its most fundamental interactions -- for example,
with water." To do so, he worked with colleague Jim Martin, professor
of chemistry at NC State, who studies the fundamental properties of
water as a solvent.

"Water has the uncanny ability to change characteristics depending on
what it's with, which gives it wide range of solubility characteristics," Martin says.

Martin is the author of an opinion piece in Matter that is a companion
to Lucia's study.

"We change the nature of water by what we dissolve in it, and by the concentrations of those solutes in water," Martin says. "Think of the
continuum between Kool-Aid and hard candy. You start with sugar. In
Kool-Aid the sugar is completely dissolved. As you remove the water, you
get taffy, then hard candy, then back to crystalline sugar." "We know
that water is critical to how cellulose is laid down," Lucia says. "So
in this study we probed how it orients itself and plays a reactive role
in mitigating or leveraging chemistry." The researchers physically
manipulated different types of wood fibers and looked at how water bound
to itself and other molecules within the resulting structures. They
saw that at lower water contents, the water distribution and resulting molecular interactions between the water and the fibers create bridging structures within the material that cause it to lose flexibility.

In fact, they saw that the water can "hide" itself within the cellulose network, forming strong hydrogen bonds. This bonding in turn dictates
the tightness or looseness of the bridging structures.

"The water forms shells around the fibers that can stack, like a nesting Russian doll," Martin says. "The fewer shells, or layers, the harder
the fibers. But when you add more layers, the connection between fibers
grows farther away and the material becomes softer." The researchers
hope to explore the variety of bonds water forms within these structures
in future work.

"Studying these interactions at the molecular level paves the way toward manipulating water in cellulose to design better products and processes," Lucian says. "Understanding what is happening from fundamental principles
lets us design approaches that take advantage of water's properties for everything from drug delivery to designing electronics."
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========================================================================== Story Source: Materials provided by
North_Carolina_State_University. Original written by Tracey Peake. Note: Content may be edited for style and length.


========================================================================== Journal Reference:
1. Kandoker Samaher Salem, Nelson Barrios, Hasan Jameel, Lokendra Pal,
Lucian Lucia,. Computational and experimental insights into the
molecular architecture of water-cellulose networks. Matter, 2023
DOI: 10.1016/ j.matt.2023.03.021 ==========================================================================

Link to news story: https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2023/05/230503154613.htm

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