Trans crystallization behavior and strong reinforcement effect of cellulose nanocrystals on reinforced poly(butylene succinate) nanocomposites

Biodegradable poly(butylene succinate) (PBS) nanocomposites are polymerized via in situ polymerization of succinic acid (SA) with cellulose nanocrystal (CNC)-loaded 1,4-butanediol (1,4-BD) mixtures. As reinforcement fillers, whisker-like CNCs are first dispersed in alcohol and sequentially spray-dried, before adding them to 1,4-BD. During the polymerization, the remains of sodium sulfonate in the CNC surfaces retard the polycondensation reaction, which is carefully controlled for the CNC-loaded systems. For the 0.1–1.0 wt% CNC-loaded PBS nanocomposites, it is found the nano-fillers are sufficiently dispersed to induce different crystallization behavior of the matrix polymer. The CNCs may initially act as heterogeneous nucleation sites of the molten PBS chains, during melt crystallization. In this case, most of them tend to be pushed out from the growing crystallites, which develop different nanocomposite morphologies with increasing CNC content. Among the resulting nanocomposites, the 0.1 wt% CNC-loaded system shows the highest tensile strength of 65.9 MPa, similar to that of nylon 6, as a representative engineering polymer as well as 2 fold elongation at break compared with Homo PBS. The in situ polymerized CNC-loaded PBS nanocomposites are expected to be a 100% biomass material for a virtuous cycle of biorefinery. Moreover, they demonstrate that the CNC-loaded PBS nanocomposite with a low CNC loading content can be used in various commercial applications for pollution abatement.