Recent Advances in Surface Chemical Modification of Cellulose Fibres

Over the last two decades, our research group has been involved in several approaches for chemical modification of cellulose fibre surfaces, with the aim to reduce their hydrophilic character and/or improve their adhesion strength to matrices in composite materials. Relevant advances were achieved recently by different modification strategies, namely (i) physical treatments, such as plasma; (ii) chemical grafting by click chemistry or by using polyether and polyester grafts and (iii) direct silanol-cellulose condensation with a prior hydrolysis treatment. The characterisation of the modified surfaces was performed using different characterisation techniques. The grafted materials were evaluated by elemental analysis, contact angle measurements, scanning electron microscopy, 13C-NMR CP-MAS, FTIR and X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy. The present paper reports the most relevant advances in the field of surface chemical modification of cellulose fibres achieved by our group over the last two years.