LAUSR.org creates dashboard-style pages of related content for over 1.5 million academic articles. Sign Up to like articles & get recommendations!

Strain-induced 3D-oriented crystallites in natural rubber/chitin nanofiber composites.

Photo by mat_graphik from unsplash

Natural rubber (NR) composites containing bio-based chitin nanofibers (ChNFs) exhibit a wide range of mechanical properties - from rubber to plastic behavior - with increasing chitin contents. A constrained 3-dimensional… Click to show full abstract

Natural rubber (NR) composites containing bio-based chitin nanofibers (ChNFs) exhibit a wide range of mechanical properties - from rubber to plastic behavior - with increasing chitin contents. A constrained 3-dimensional network can be formed by mixing natural rubber latex and a modified zwitterionic rigid chitin counterpart. By inclusion of highly anisotropic chitin nanofibers (30 wt%), strain-induced NR crystallization occurs at a much lower strain of 50%. More intriguingly, 2D-WAXD results reveal that the strain-induced crystallization of NR/ChNFs composites show 3-dimensionally oriented crystallite formation behaving similar to "3D-single crystals orientation" when the content of ChNFs is over 5 wt%. It is suggested that not only c-axis (NR chains) orients along the stretching direction, but also the a- and b-axes deliberately arrange along the normal direction and transverse direction, respectively. Structure and morphology in 3-dimensional spaces after strain-induced crystallization of the NR/ChNFs30 composite are investigated in detail. Therefore, this study might pave a new way to enhance mechanical properties by incorporation of ChNFs, obtaining 3-dimensionally oriented crystallites of novel multifunctional NR/ChNFs composite with shape memory ability.

Keywords: chitin; strain induced; chnfs; natural rubber; oriented crystallites

Journal Title: Soft matter
Year Published: 2023

Link to full text (if available)


Share on Social Media:                               Sign Up to like & get
recommendations!

Related content

More Information              News              Social Media              Video              Recommended



                Click one of the above tabs to view related content.