Fabrication of superhydrophobic cellulose powder

Superhydrophobic cellulose-based products show tremendous potential applications in both industries and researches owing to their inherent biodegradability, non-toxicity, and cost-effectiveness. However, previous studies mainly focused on superhydrophobic cellulose bulk materials rather than universal cellulose powder. Though some methods have been proposed for preparing superhydrophobic cellulose powder, their fabricating processes involve plenty of high-toxic organic solvents.

Multifunctional material fabrication

In a new work, researchers have now proposed a facile one-step solvent-free method to prepare superhydrophobic cellulose powder. The modified cellulose powder shows not only superhydrophobicity but also reversible wettability. Moreover, the superhydrophobic cellulose shows immense UV resistance by enduring 60 h UV radiation. According to the researchers, their work provides a green method to produce superhydrophobic cellulose powder which can be used as a raw material for sophisticated multifunctional material fabrication in future.

The study has been published in Progress in Organic Coatings, Volume 173, December 2022.