The cold alkaline treatment or mercerization of cellulose is widely used in industry to enrich the cellulose raw with high-molecular-weight $$\alpha$$
α
-cellulose. Washing out of hemicelluloses by alkalies is accompanied by the rearrangement of the cellulose chains’ packing, well known as a transition between cellulose I and cellulose II.
Cellulose II can also be produced by the precipitation of the cellulose solutions (regeneration). The currently accepted theory implies that in cellulose II, both mercerized and regenerated, the macromolecules are arranged antiparallelly. However, forming such a structure in the course of the mercerization seems to be significantly hindered, while it seems to be quite possible in the regeneration process. In this work, we discuss the sticking points in the theory on the antiparallel structure of mercerized cellulose from a theoretical point of view summarizing all of the available experimental data in the field.
scite is a Brooklyn-based organization that helps researchers better discover and understand research articles through Smart Citations–citations that display the context of the citation and describe whether the article provides supporting or contrasting evidence. scite is used by students and researchers from around the world and is funded in part by the National Science Foundation and the National Institute on Drug Abuse of the National Institutes of Health.