Electrically conductive bacterial cellulose composite membranes produced by the incorporation of graphite nanoplatelets in pristine bacterial cellulose membranes

Abstract

Graphite nanoplatelets (GNPs) were utilized to improve the electrical conductivity of pristine bacterial cellulose (BC) membranes. By physical and chemical methods, flake-shaped GNPs, weaving through the surface layer of web-like cellulose nanofibrils, were indeed fixed or trapped by the adjacent nanofibrils in the BC surface network, for comparison, rod-shaped multi-walled carbon nanotubes (MWCNTs) were homogeneously inserted into BC membrane through the pore structures and tunnels within the BC membrane. Strong physical and chemical interaction exists between the BC nanofibrils and the particles of GNP or MWCNT even after 15 h sonication. BC membrane with 8.7 wt% incorporated GNPs reached the maximum electrical conductivity of 4.5 S/cm, while 13.9 wt% MWCNT/BC composite membrane achieved the maximum electrical conductivity of 1.2 S/cm. Compared with one dimensional (1-D) MWCNTs, as long as GNPs inserted into BC membranes, the 2-D reinforcement of GNPs was proven to be more effective in improving the electrical conductivity of BC membranes thus not only break the bottleneck of further improvement of the electrical conductivity of BC-based composite membranes but also broaden the applications of BC and GNPs

Synthesis and characterization of a novel bacterial cellulose–poly(3,4-ethylenedioxythiophene)–poly(styrene sulfonate) composite for use in biomedical applications

“…BC conducting composites have been reported with conducting nanaomaterials including carbon nanotubes (Yoon et al 2006), graphene (Feng et al 2012) and graphite nanoplatelets (Zhou et al 2013) and polymers such as polypyrole (Muller et al 2011) and polyaniline (Marins et al 2011). However, in all these reports the emphasis was on the optoelectronic applications of the synthesized BC conducting composites.…”

Optoelectronics and Bio Devices on Paper Powered by Solar Cells

“…Bacterial cellulose is a bacteria-produced biopolymer composed of ultrafine nanofibers (<100 nm wide); the major perks of this material, comparing to the nanocellulose obtained from wood, is its purity and crystallinity since it is free of lignin, hemicellulose, and other components present in the vegetable cellulose [64][65][66]. This material can be obtained from several cellulose-producing bacteria, such as Gluconacetobacter genus, Agrobacterium tumefaciens, bacteria of the genera Pseudomonas, among others; the cellulose is produced extracellularly since the bacteria excretes the cellulose into an aqueous culture medium, of low molecular weight sugars, directly as nanofibers, which form a porous three-dimensional nanocellulose mesh structure [67][68][69].…”

EFFECTS OF AGITATION CONDITIONS ON BACTERIAL CELLULOSE PRODUCTION BY Acetobacter xylinum 0416 IN FERMENTATION OF MATURED COCONUT WATER MEDIUM

“…Even though, BC has similar chemical formula with plant cellulose, its fibrils formation is chemically pure and possess superior physiochemical properties that plant cellulose cannot provide. This cellulosic microfibrils become a promising biomaterial in various fields including biomedical [3], food [4,5,6] and electronic [7,8]. Most Acetobacter xylinum strains produce high level of cellulose under static condition.…”