2017 Volume 55 Pages 11-19
Nanocelluloses are promising bio-based nanomaterials prepared from abundant wood biomass resources. Numerous inter-fibrillar hydrogen bonds are present in native wood fibers, which causes high energy consumption in preparation process of nanocelluloses. Hence, various chemical and enzymatic pretreatments of wood fibers have been developed to reduce energy consumption in mechanical nanofibrillation process and to prepare nanocelluloses with fine widths as much as possible. Because bulk nanocellulose materials and nanocellulose-containing composite materials have unique properties applicable to high-tech fields, nanocellulose-related fundamental and application studies have been extensively and intensively carried out in this century. From this aspect, some presentations reported in 2016 TAPPI Nanotech Conference held in Grenoble, France, are introduced in terms of creation of new nanocellulose-based industries.