Morphological Observation of Cellulose Nanofiber Obtained by Mechanical Defibration

In addition to light weight and high strength, cellulose nanofiber (CNF) also offers outstanding functions such as a high gas barrier property, adsorption, and transparency. Because CNF is produced by the grinder method, in which cellulose is mechanically defibrated, optimization of the defibration conditions is required for efficient production of larger quantities of CNF.
In this article, the morphology of fibers during defibration was focused, which had not been considered important in the past, and a scanning probe microscope (SPM) and a laser scanning microscope (LSM) were used for the observation.