synopsisAny spinning of high-polymeric solutions and any extruding of high-polymeric melts produce fibrillar textures built-up of folded molecules with a predominantly uniform period. Because data strongly suggest extended molecules within native cellulose elementary fibrils, spinning or extruding as potential fibrillar growth mechanisms must be considered unlikely. Among the crystallization conditions known to produce extended chain structures, Crystallization with simultaneous polymerization appears the most plausible mechanism for forming elementary fibrils. The mechanism yields a structure distinguished by uniformity of lateral order along the fibrillar length axis with the lateral order being paracrystalline. Because thermodynamic equilibrium requires a fibrillar structure of alternating crystalline and amorphous regions, a newly grown elementary fibril is hypothesized to be in a thermodynamically unfavorable state. Intermolecular forces "freezing-in" the unfavorable state provide metastability. Whenever the intermolecular cohesion is weakened, a structural transformation of the paracrystalline fibril is predicted, which consists of the creation of distinctly disordered and distinctly well-ordered phases. Because disorder is created, a transforming fibril contracts longitudinally. The transformation must be expected to be gradual, which gives rise to a series of intermediate metastable structures of decreasing free energy levels. With lattice type I, a fibril, however, is believed unable to reach the stable state. The equilibrium structure characterized by coexistence of perfectly ordered crystallites with completely disordered regions is thought associated with lattice type 11.