Perspectives on the Lindman Hypothesis and Cellulose Interactions

Abstract

In the history of cellulose chemistry, hydrogen bonding has been the predominant explanation when discussing intermolecular interactions between cellulose polymers. This is the general consensus in scholarly textbooks and in many research articles, and it applies to several other biomacromolecules’ interactions as well. This rather unbalanced description of cellulose has likely impacted the development of materials based on the processing of cellulose—for example, via dissolution in various solvent systems and regeneration into solid materials, such as films and fibers, and even traditional wood fiber handling and papermaking. In this review, we take as a starting point the questioning of the general description of the nature of cellulose and cellulose interactions initiated by Professor Björn Lindman, based on generic physicochemical reasoning about surfactants and polymers. This dispute, which became known as “the Lindman hypothesis”, highlights the importance of hydrophobic interactions in cellulose systems and that cellulose is an amphiphilic polymer. This paper elaborates on Björn Lindman’s contribution to the subject, which has caused the scientific community to revisit cellulose and reconsider certain phenomena from other perspectives.