High performance cellulose fibers regenerated from 1‐butyl‐3‐methylimidazolium chloride solution: Effects of viscosity and molecular weight

Abstract

In the present study, we focused on several factors affecting the utility of 1-butyl-3-methylimidazolium chloride (BMIMCl) for obtaining higher performance fibers. The dependence of the spinnability and tensile strength of the fibers on the zero-shear viscosity of the spinning solutions was investigated based on differences in the molecular weight of the cellulose, pulp concentration, and the pH of BMIMCl. We demonstrated an appropriate viscosity range of 2000-4000 Pa s −1 (100 C) for spinning dopes to obtain good spinnability and high tensile strength. The pH of the BMIMCl and the molecular weight of the cellulose clearly impacted tensile strength. The high molecular weight of cellulose contributed to high mechanical properties of the regenerated cellulose fibers. Optimizing the molecular weight and concentration of the cellulose based on the appropriate viscosity allowed us to prepare high performance cellulose fibers with a tensile strength of 1.15 GPa and a Young's modulus of 42.9 GPa.Numerous studies on regenerated cellulose fibers spun from ILs via dry-jet wet spinning have investigated the effects of various cationic bases, anions, and alkyl chains on the properties of ILs including solvation and viscosity, 10 which would affect the spinnability and the properties of spun fibers. Chen et al. 11 reported the preparation of regenerated cellulose fibers from Additional Supporting Information may be found in the online version of this article.

High-performance cellulosic filament fibers prepared via dry-jet wet spinning from ionic liquids

“…So far, most spinning processes are based on imidazoliumbased ILs. Notably, some imidazolium-based ILs are unsuitable for industrialization despite their good solubility for cellulose and good fiber properties with tensile strengths up to 808 MPa and Youngs moduli up to 30 GPa of the resulting fibers (Jiang et al 2012;Kosan et al 2007Kosan et al , 2012Zhang et al 2017bZhang et al , 2019Zhang et al , 2020. This is not only due to their corrosive behavior, but also to the toxicity of these ILs, as is the case with 1-butyl-3-methylimidazolium chloride ([C 4 C 1 im][Cl]) (Couling et al 2006).…”

Fabrication of Regenerated Cellulose Fibers with Good Strength and Biocompatibility from Green Spinning Process of Ionic Liquid

“…Ionic liquids (ILs) have attracted considerable attention as alternative solvents, owing to their outstanding characteristics of chemical and thermal stability, excellent dissolution performance, and recyclability. [ 9,10 ] In the past decade, dozens of ILs have been investigated to dissolve cellulose for spinning, such as 1‐allyl‐3‐methylimidazolium chloride, [ 11,12 ] 1‐butyl‐3‐methylimidazolium chloride, [ 13 ] 1‐ethyl‐3‐methylimidazolium acetate, [ 14 ] 1,5‐diazabicyclo[4.3.0]non‐5‐ene acetate, [ 15 ] and so on. These ILs showed excellent performance to dissolve cellulose as strong hydrogen bond interactions could form between cellulose and ILs, [ 16 ] leading to the appearance of Ioncell process.…”

Fractionation of Regenerated Silk Fibroin and Characterization of the Fractions

“…Actually, MW and its distribution are well known to influence the mechanical, thermal, and rheological properties of polymer materials [ 14 , 15 ]. The mechanical properties of regenerated cellulose fibers are positively correlated with the increased MW of cellulose [ 16 ]. Reportedly, the MW distribution strongly influences the tensile properties of cellulose fiber [ 17 ].…”