Hard biodegradable yarn like steel made of wood cellulose

A team of researchers working at the KTH Royal Institute of Technology, Stockholm, Sweden recently developed a method that makes cellulose fibers hard as steel in terms of hardness / weight ratio. The research team from the Wallenberg Wood Science Center (WWSC) of KTH said that the new fiber could be used as a bio-target material to replace many other fibrous materials made from substances. Durable like glass fiber, plastic and metal. All that is needed to make cellulose fibers by the team is water, wood cellulose and common table salt.

To create the material, the team took each cellulose fiber and peeled it into component fibers (fibers). They then proceeded to divide and squeeze the fibers with a special technique to make the bundles harder than the original ones. This method is not new and has been used to reinforce synthetic materials, however, the recombination of fibers into a superhard fiber has not been achieved in previous studies and the results of KTH. can be considered a new finding in this field of research.

Research team member Fredrik Lundell said: " We took fibers from natural cellulose fibers and then stitched the fibers back together, forming a very hard bundle of fibers. Each fiber bundle was 10 to 20 microns thick. , equivalent to a human hair ".

The team built a small-scale molding machine to assemble the fibers after they were mixed with water and sodium chloride (table salt). By carefully adjusting pressure presses, the team was able to create persistent, durable bundles of fibers from the fibers. In this process, they also cleverly adjusted the contact angles of the fiber to determine the strength and stiffness of the yarn. If the fibers are folded in parallel, the material will be very hard and not flexible. Conversely, if the fibers are combined at multiple angles of contact, the material is more flexible and malleable.

As a result, fibers can be used to create not only hard bundles of steel, but also bundles of fibers with interwoven fibers. From here, wood cellulose can replace cotton in textiles or even replace glass fibers to build boats or cars. Because the material retains the properties of cellulose, it is still biodegradable like wood.

"Our research may be aimed at a new construction material that can be widely used instead of glass fibers. The challenge we face now is to find ways to increase production scale. We have to do how to create many long threads at the same time to speed up this process. However, we have proven that we know what to do and the road ahead is still long. "

The study was conducted in cooperation with DESY electronic synchronous speed center in Hamburg, Germany. The research report was published in the scientific journal Nature Communications.