MECHANISM OF DISORDER GENESIS IN CELLULOSE MICROFIBRILS

"We discuss the possible mechanism of genesis of disordered regions in cellulose microfibrils. In our work, we showthat obstacles stopping the growth of nanofibrils and the further deformation of nanofibrils may be the reasons fordisorder. In this case, the initial prismatic shape of nanofibrils becomes corrugated and regions, where cellulose chainslose their initial straight configuration, appear in it. If a pack of thus deformed nanofibrils form a microfibril, then itcontains disordered regions of two types. The first one consists in boundary layers, which separate nanofibrils fromeach other. The second type represents amorphous regions located inside each nanofibril. In this discussion, we use thelinear theory of elasticity. With its help, we estimated longitudinal dimensions of cellulose crystallites and thencompared them with values of such sizes calculated based on experimental data. The experimentally obtained valuesturned out to be, to a certain extent, greater than the theoretically estimated ones."