Publications
548 results found
Weiland K, Jones M, Fortea-Verdejo M, et al., 2019, Waste-derived nanocellulose-chitin hybrid materials with tunable physical properties
Cellulose and chitin, the most abundant natural polymers in the world, are used in applications ranging from construction and paper to cosmetics, pharmaceuticals and water treatment. Traditionally these polymers have been sourced from finite resources such as forests and crustacean exoskeletons, however they can be sourced more sustainably and at lower cost through waste upcycling. This study investigated nanocellulose-chitin hybrid materials derived from sugarcane by-products; cellulose from bagasse and fungal chitin from mycelial biomass grown on molasses. Hybrid physical properties such as mechanical performance and wettability were then tuned using varying ratios of nanocellulose and Trametes versicolor and Allomyces arbuscular fungal chitins. The natural polymers were isolated via mild chemical extraction and hot-pressed to produce hybrid materials, utilising more hydrophobic A. arbuscular and more hydrophilic T. versicolor fungal chitin, reinforced with nanocellulose. The resulting homogenous materials constituted cheap, environmentally sustainable thin films with tunable physical properties, potentially suitable for applications including coatings, membranes and paper.
Yousefi N, Maples HA, James T, et al., 2019, Manufacturing affordable composites using solid epoxy resins
© CCM 2020 - 18th European Conference on Composite Materials. All rights reserved. We have investigated the use of solid epoxy resins in composite manufacturing. Solid epoxy resins are mainly used as protective coatings e.g. in marine applications, and have had limited use as composite matrices. Solid epoxy formulations are typically much cheaper than liquid epoxy resins commonly used in composite production. The development of a novel manufacturing method with solid epoxies could therefore lower the overall cost of high performance composites. Different resins were formulated by mixing solid epoxies, hardeners and accelerators at elevated temperatures. These mixtures were then ground into uncured, resin powders. The resin powders were applied directly onto carbon fibers, which were then heated, infused with the melted resin system and cured (curing times of <10 min were achieved by using accelerators). The laminates manufactured without accelerator had competitive mechanical properties (flexural modulus, 80 GPa; flexural strength, 1270 MPa) when compared against other high-performance composites. However, the addition of accelerator led to higher void content in the matrix, which affected the mechanical composite properties. In order to prevent a high void content flow media was successfully introduced into the process.
Mautner A, Weiland K, Bismarck A, 2019, Cellulose nanopaper composites based on nanocellulose from elephant manure
Nanocelluloses (NFC) gained substantial attention in recent years as reinforcement of composite materials due to their excellent properties. One promising approach to yield high fibre volume fraction NFC composites is to laminate nanopapers. Thereby, the characteristics of the nanopapers directly determine the properties of the composites, hence, excellent mechanical properties of the nanopapers are desired. Nonetheless, aiming at ecologically sound solutions, also the raw material of the NFC needs to be considered. In this regard, utilizing agricultural waste rather than high-grade resources (wood) as base material would be vital. We have identified elephant manure to be a suitable precursor for the preparation of NFC, for elephants digest only about 35 % of their diet. Accordingly, their excrements contain large quantities of fibrous cellulosic material, whereby the ingestion and digestion already initiates fibre break-down. Thus, utilizing the elephant as first-stage bioreactor for the defibrillation of cellulose fibres by mechanical and chemical means constitutes an energy-efficient approach for the production of NFC. We demonstrate that by chemical purification of elephant manure, cellulose nanofibrils can be isolated from which papers were produced that had better mechanical properties than most common unmodified NFC nanopapers thus being ideal candidates for the preparation of nanopaper composites.
Jalalian M, Jiang Q, Birot M, et al., 2018, Frothed black liquor as a renewable cost effective precursor to low-density lignin and carbon foams, REACTIVE & FUNCTIONAL POLYMERS, Vol: 132, Pages: 145-151, ISSN: 1381-5148
Murakami R, Kobayashi S, Okazaki M, et al., 2018, Effects of Contact Angle and Flocculation of Particles of Oligomer of Tetrafluoroethylene on Oil Foaming, FRONTIERS IN CHEMISTRY, Vol: 6, ISSN: 2296-2646
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- Citations: 7
Javaid A, Ho KKC, Bismarck A, et al., 2018, Improving the multifunctional behaviour of structural supercapacitors by incorporating chemically activated carbon fibres and mesoporous silica particles as reinforcement, JOURNAL OF COMPOSITE MATERIALS, Vol: 52, Pages: 3085-3097, ISSN: 0021-9983
Anthony DB, Sui X, Kellersztein I, et al., 2018, Continuous carbon nanotube synthesis on charged carbon fibers, Composites Part A: Applied Science and Manufacturing, Vol: 112, Pages: 525-538, ISSN: 1359-835X
Carbon nanotube grafted carbon fibers (CNT-g-CFs) were prepared continuously, spool to spool, via thermal CVD. The application of an in-situ potential difference (300 V), between the fibers and a cylindrical graphite foil counter electrode, enhanced the growth, producing a uniform coverage of carbon nanotubes with diameter ca. 10 nm and length ca. 125 nm. Single fiber tensile tests show that this approach avoids the significant reduction of the underlying carbon fiber strengths, which is usually associated with CVD grafting processes. Single fiber fragmentation tests in epoxy, with in-situ video fragment detection, demonstrated that the CNT-g-CFs have the highest interfacial shear strength reported for such systems (101 ± 5 MPa), comparable to state–of–the–art sizing controls (103 ± 8 MPa). Single fiber pull-out data show similar trends. The short length of the grafted CNTs is particularly attractive for retaining the volume fraction of the primary fibers in composite applications. The results are compared with a short review of the interfacial data available for related systems.
Steindl P, Menner A, Bismarck A, 2018, Pushing the limits - producing highly porous epoxy resins, 256th National Meeting and Exposition of the American-Chemical-Society (ACS) - Nanoscience, Nanotechnology and Beyond, Publisher: AMER CHEMICAL SOC, ISSN: 0065-7727
Menner A, Rusakov D, Bismarck A, 2018, High performance polymer foams: How to push lots of air into PEEK, PEKK and TPI, 256th National Meeting and Exposition of the American-Chemical-Society (ACS) - Nanoscience, Nanotechnology and Beyond, Publisher: AMER CHEMICAL SOC, ISSN: 0065-7727
Jalalian M, Jiang Q, Bismarck A, 2018, Any good? Foam templating as route for tailor-made macroporous polymer foams, 256th National Meeting and Exposition of the American-Chemical-Society (ACS) - Nanoscience, Nanotechnology and Beyond, Publisher: AMER CHEMICAL SOC, ISSN: 0065-7727
Stubenrauch C, Menner A, Bismarck A, et al., 2018, Emulsion and Foam TemplatingPromising Routes to Tailor-Made Porous Polymers, ANGEWANDTE CHEMIE-INTERNATIONAL EDITION, Vol: 57, Pages: 10024-10032, ISSN: 1433-7851
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- Citations: 79
Hagberg J, Maples HA, Alvim KSP, et al., 2018, Lithium iron phosphate coated carbon fiber electrodes for structural lithium ion batteries, COMPOSITES SCIENCE AND TECHNOLOGY, Vol: 162, Pages: 235-243, ISSN: 0266-3538
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- Citations: 62
Anthony DB, Bacarreza Nogales O, Shaffer M, et al., 2018, Pseudo-ductile failure mechanism introduced into finger jointed thermoplastic PES interleaved CFRC, ECCM18 - 18th European Conference on Composite Materials
Pre-cut unidirectional carbon fibre prepreg composites, with an overlapped finger-joint architecture, were modified through the addition of polyethersulfone (PES) interleaves. The properties arising from these finger-jointed configurations were strongly dependent on the interply overlap region. When the tough thermoplastic interleaves spanned only the central portion of the overlap, a crack arresting failure mechanism was observed in tension. A pronounced plateau region or pseudo-ductile response was shown in conjunction with a strain hardening response after crack arrest. The local strain-to-failure of PES interleaved samples was ~3.2%, an increase of 85% compared to the pre-cut baseline (strain-to-failure 1.6%, pre-cut specimens without interleaves).
De Luca F, Clancy A, Rubio Carrero N, et al., 2018, Increasing carbon fiber composite strength with a nanostructured“brick-and-mortar” interphase, Materials Horizons, Vol: 5, Pages: 668-674, ISSN: 2051-6355
Conventional fiber-reinforced composites suffer from the formation of critical clusters of correlated fiber breaks, leading to sudden composite failure in tension. To mitigate this problem, an optimized “brick-and-mortar” nanostructured interphase was developed, in order to absorb energy at fiber breaks and alleviate local stress concentrations whilst maintaining effective load transfer. The coating was designed to exploit crack bifurcation and platelet interlocking mechanisms known in natural nacre. However, the architecture was scaled down by an order of magnitude to allow a highly ordered conformal coating to be deposited around conventional structural carbon fibers, whilst retaining the characteristic phase proportions and aspect ratios of the natural system. Drawing on this bioinspiration, a Layer-by-Layer assembly method was used to coat multiple fibers simultaneously, providing an efficient and potentially scalable route for production. Single fiber pull out and fragmentation tests showed improved interfacial characteristics for energy absorption and plasticity. Impregnated fiber tow model composites demonstrated increases in absolute tensile strength (+15%) and strain-to-failure (+30%), as compared to composites containing conventionally sized fibers.
Niinivaara E, Arshath SAA, Nieminen K, et al., 2018, The Effect of Polymorphism on the Kinetics of Adsorption and Degradation: A Case of Hydrogen Chloride Vapor on Cellulose, ADVANCED SUSTAINABLE SYSTEMS, Vol: 2, ISSN: 2366-7486
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- Citations: 9
Mautner A, Lee K-Y, Bismarck A, 2018, Nanopaper nanofiltration membranes from seawater suspensions of TEMPO-CNF, 255th National Meeting and Exposition of the American-Chemical-Society (ACS) - Nexus of Food, Energy, and Water, Publisher: AMER CHEMICAL SOC, ISSN: 0065-7727
Jalalian M, Jiang Q, Bismarck A, 2018, Beat it! Foam templated macroporous lignin foams, 255th National Meeting and Exposition of the American-Chemical-Society (ACS) - Nexus of Food, Energy, and Water, Publisher: AMER CHEMICAL SOC, ISSN: 0065-7727
Mautner A, Weiland K, Bismarck A, 2018, Cellulose nanopapers from elephant manure, 255th National Meeting and Exposition of the American-Chemical-Society (ACS) - Nexus of Food, Energy, and Water, Publisher: AMER CHEMICAL SOC, ISSN: 0065-7727
Mautner A, Lee K-Y, Kontturi E, et al., 2018, Included? Not included! (Nano)Cellulose inclusion compounds, 255th National Meeting and Exposition of the American-Chemical-Society (ACS) - Nexus of Food, Energy, and Water, Publisher: AMER CHEMICAL SOC, ISSN: 0065-7727
Santmarti A, Hervy M, Mautner A, et al., 2018, Highly porous and highly permeable bacterial cellulose nanopaper as reinforcement for polymers, 255th National Meeting and Exposition of the American-Chemical-Society (ACS) - Nexus of Food, Energy, and Water, Publisher: AMER CHEMICAL SOC, ISSN: 0065-7727
De Luca F, Sernicola G, Bismarck A, et al., 2018, “Brick-and-Mortar” Nanostructured Interphase for Glass Fiber-Reinforced Polymer Composites, ACS Applied Materials and Interfaces, Vol: 10, Pages: 7352-7361, ISSN: 1944-8244
The fiber–matrix interface plays a critical role in determining composite mechanical properties. While a strong interface tends to provide high strength, a weak interface enables extensive debonding, leading to a high degree of energy absorption. Balancing these conflicting requirements by engineering composite interfaces to improve strength and toughness simultaneously still remains a great challenge. Here, a nanostructured fiber coating was realized to manifest the critical characteristics of natural nacre, at a reduced length scale, consistent with the surface curvature of fibers. The new interphase contains a high proportion (∼90 wt %) of well-aligned inorganic platelets embedded in a polymer; the window of suitable platelet dimensions is very narrow, with an optimized platelet width and thickness of about 130 and 13 nm, respectively. An anisotropic, nanostructured coating was uniformly and conformally deposited onto a large number of 9 μm diameter glass fibers, simultaneously, using self-limiting layer-by-layer assembly (LbL); this parallel approach demonstrates a promising strategy to exploit LbL methods at scale. The resulting nanocomposite interphase, primarily loaded in shear, provides new mechanisms for stress dissipation and plastic deformation. The energy released by fiber breakage in tension appear to spread and dissipate within the nanostructured interphase, accompanied by stable fiber slippage, while the interfacial strength was improved up to 30%.
Buldum G, Bismarck A, Mantalaris A, 2018, Recombinant biosynthesis of bacterial cellulose in genetically modified Escherichia coli, BIOPROCESS AND BIOSYSTEMS ENGINEERING, Vol: 41, Pages: 265-279, ISSN: 1615-7591
Bacterial cellulose (BC) exhibits unique properties such as high purity compared to plant-based cellulose; however, commercial production of BC has remained a challenge, primarily due to the strain properties of cellulose-producing bacteria. Herein, we developed a functional and stable BC production system in genetically modified (GM) Escherichia coli by recombinant expression of both the BC synthase operon (bcsABCD) and the upstream operon (cmcax, ccp Ax). BC production was achieved in GM HMS174 (DE3) and in GM C41 (DE3) by optimization of the culture temperature (22 °C, 30 °C, and 37 °C) and IPTG concentration. BC biosynthesis was detected much earlier in GM C41 (DE3) cultures (3 h after IPTG induction) than those of Gluconacetobacter hansenii. GM HMS174 (DE3) produced dense fibres having a length of approximately 1000–3000 μm and a diameter of 10–20 μm, which were remarkably larger than the fibres of BC typically produced by G. hansenii.
Woodward RT, Markoulidis F, De Luca F, et al., 2018, Carbon foams from emulsion-templated reduced graphene oxide polymer composites: electrodes for supercapacitor devices, Journal of Materials Chemistry A, Vol: 6, Pages: 1840-1849, ISSN: 2050-7496
Amphiphilic reduced graphene oxide (rGO) is an efficient emulsifier for water-in-divinylbenzene (DVB) high internal phase emulsions. The polymerisation of the continuous DVB phase of the emulsion template and removal of water results in macroporous poly(divinylbenzene) (polyDVB). Subsequent pyrolysis of the poly(DVB) macroporous polymers yields ‘all-carbon’ foams containing micropores alongside emulsion templated-macropores, resulting in hierarchical porosity. The synthesis of carbon foams, or ‘carboHIPEs’, from poly(DVB) produced by polymerisation of rGO stabilised HIPEs provides both exceptionally high surface areas (up to 1820 m2/g) and excellent electrical conductivities (up to 285 S/m), competing with the highest figures reported for carboHIPEs. The use of a 2D carbon emulsifier results in the elimination of post-carbonisation treatments to remove standard inorganic particulate emulsifiers, such as silica particles. It is demonstrated that rGO containing carboHIPEs are good candidates for supercapacitor electrodes where carboHIPEs derived from more conventional polymerised silica-stabilised HIPEs perform poorly. Supercapacitor devices featured a room-temperature ionic liquid electrolyte and electrodes derived from either rGO- or silica-containing poly(DVB)HIPEs and demonstrated a maximum specific capacitance of 26 F g-1, an energy density of 5.2 Wh kg-1 and a power density of 280 W kg-1.
Werner M, Perko J, Prinz V, et al., 2018, P2BM.8 - Pickering Emulsion Polymerization of Polystyrene to Synthesize Bacteria Imprinted Polymer Beads for Pre- Concentration, 17th International Meeting on Chemical Sensors - IMCS 2018, Publisher: AMA Service GmbH, Von-Münchhausen-Str. 49, 31515 Wunstorf, Germany
Fortea-Verdejo M, Bismarck A, 2018, Upgrading the Properties of Woven and Non-Woven (Ligno) Cellulosic Fibre Preforms with Nanocellulose, NANOCELLULOSE AND SUSTAINABILITY: PRODUCTION, PROPERTIES, APPLICATIONS, AND CASE STUDIES, Editors: Lee, Publisher: CRC PRESS-TAYLOR & FRANCIS GROUP, Pages: 197-216, ISBN: 978-1-4987-6103-1
Mautner A, Mayer F, Hervy M, et al., 2017, Better together: synergy in nanocellulose blends, Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society A. Mathematical, Physical and Engineering Sciences, Vol: 376, ISSN: 1364-503X
Cellulose nanopapers have gained significantattention in recent years as large-scale reinforcementfor high-loading cellulose nanocomposites, substratesfor printed electronics and filter nanopapers forwater treatment. The mechanical properties ofnanopapers are of fundamental importance forall these applications. Cellulose nanopapers cansimply be prepared by filtering a suspension ofnanocellulose, followed by heat consolidation. It wasalready demonstrated that the mechanical propertiesof cellulose nanopapers can be tailored by the finenessof the fibrils used or by modifying nanocellulosefibrils for instance by polymer adsorption, butnanocellulose blends remain underexplored. In thiswork, we show that the mechanical and physicalproperties of cellulose nanopapers can be tuned bycreating nanopapers from blends of various gradesof nanocellulose, i.e. (mechanically refined) bacterialcellulose or cellulose nanofibrils extracted fromnever-dried bleached softwood pulp by chemical andmechanical pre-treatments. We found that nanopapersmade from blends of two or three nanocellulosegrades show synergistic effects resulting in improvedstiffness, strength, ductility, toughness and physicalproperties.This article is part of a discussion meeting issue‘New horizons for cellulose nanotechnology’.
Jiang Q, Barkan H, Menner A, et al., 2017, Micropatterned, macroporous polymer springs for capacitive energy harvesters, POLYMER, Vol: 126, Pages: 419-424, ISSN: 0032-3861
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- Citations: 15
Lorenz M, Sattler S, Reza M, et al., 2017, Cellulose nanocrystals by acid vapour: towards more effortless isolation of cellulose nanocrystals, FARADAY DISCUSSIONS, Vol: 202, Pages: 315-330, ISSN: 1359-6640
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- Citations: 43
Zhang B, Robinson P, Bismarck A, et al., 2017, An investigation of the viscoelastic behaviour of interleaved composite with shape memory capability, 21st International Conference on Composite Materials (!CCM-21)
© 2017 International Committee on Composite Materials. All rights reserved. A carbon fibre/epoxy composite with thermoplastic interleaves has been developed which exhibits shape memory capabilities upon heating. The shape memory capability was previously modelled using finite elements but the viscoelastic behaviour of the interleaf was not considered. This paper reports on an experimental and modelling investigation into the viscoelastic behaviour of the interleaved composite. This has a significant effect on the re-shaping of this interleaved composite and on the deployment time of structures made of this material.
Maples HA, Robinson P, Zhang B, et al., 2017, Exploring deployable configurations using interleaved composite with shape memory capability, 21stInternational Conference on Composite Materials
© 2017 International Committee on Composite Materials. All rights reserved. An interleaved composite which exhibits shape memory capability controlled by heating has been developed. Trials of this material have been conducted to investigate the potential of using the interleaved composite for deployable structures. This paper reports on an investigation of the shape memory performance of a deployable spring made of the interleaved composite in tension. It is shown that the spring was easily re-shaped to a straight shape with little force and exhibited an excellent shape recovery (99.5%) upon re-heating. This spring may be suitable as a shape memory actuator for space applications.
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