Facile in situ synthesis of nickel/cellulose nanocomposites: mechanisms, properties and perspectives

Nickel/cellulose nanocomposites with tunable magnetic behavior and electrical conductivity were fabricated by a facile in situ synthesis route with aqueous NaOH/urea solution as the solvent to dissolve and regenerate cellulose. It was found that Ni particles are uniformly dispersed in and immobilized by cellulose matrix, which indicates that regenerated cellulose fibers with coarse surface might act as templates to modulate the growth of Ni nanoparticles. Moreover, the size and morphology of Ni nanoparticles as well as the magnetic and conductive properties of Ni/cellulose nanocomposites is dependent on the concentration of Ni²⁺ in NaOH/urea aqueous solution. With an increase in the concentration of Ni²⁺ from 0.2 to 1.0 mol/L, the values of saturation magnetization increased from 16.6 to 38.5 emu/g, while the resistance decreased from 10⁶ to 10⁻² Ω cm. Particularly, multi-layer sample exhibits good absorption capacity and an additional effective bandwidth in the low-frequency region, showing promising potential as candidate electromagnetic functional fabric and cloth.