A World View of Nanocellulose

Forests provide important economic and environmental benefits. Forest biomass in the form of trees is the basis for America’s forest products sector; is sustainable and renewable; and sequesters carbon both in the growth of forest biomass and in forest products. In the US, over 200 million tons of wood are annually converted to over $250 billion of products employing 1 million Americans and representing about 6 percent of manufacturing GDP. Despite this, less than one percent of total standing forest biomass is used for products and annual growth over harvest ratio is over 2:1. 

 Wood is a fibrillar hierarchical orthotropic material primarily composed of cellulose, hemicellulose and lignin. Woodfiber is composed of nanodimensional building blocks that have strength properties greater than Kevlar® and piezoelectric properties equivalent to quartz; can be manipulated to produce photonic structures; are remarkably uniform in size and shape; possess self-assembly properties; and can be renewably produced in quantities of tens of millions of tons. 

 Nanotechnology has enormous promise to bring about fundamental changes and benefits. Applications of nanotechnology to the manufacture of products promise new value-added features, improved performance attributes, reduced energy intensity, and more efficient use of materials. Use of wood-derived cellulosic nanomaterials in composites will allow the production of much lighter weight, hyper-strength, multifunctional materials with widespread application. Other applications include such things as flexible electronic displays; clear armor; self-sterilizing and self-healing surfaces; pharmaceutical products; and intelligent wood- and paper-based products with an array of micro and nanosensors. 

 Recognizing the importance of nanotechnology, the forest products industry, the Forest Service and academia have taken established a common agenda for forest products nanotechnology R&D through Public-Private partnership. The focus of the partnership is to develop precompetitive science and technology critical to the economic use cellulosic nanomaterials. Current research focus to efficiently produce quantities of cellulosic nanomaterials for research and applications development; characterize cellulosic nanomaterials; develop the means to modify the functionality of cellulose nanomaterial surfaces; develop the enabling science and technologies needed to capture the performance properties of cellulosic nanomaterials and produce nano-enabled macroscale composites; and develop multiscale modeling.