Cladophora nanocrystalline cellulose: Structure and morphology

The outstanding physicochemical properties and high environmental compatibility of cellulose nanocrystalline (CNC) promise to serve as a strategic platform for sustainable development. Qualitative analysis of the X-ray diffraction (XRD) diffractogram pattern, has informed the CNC crystallinity degree is 94% and the crystallite size is 7.64 nm. Quantitative analysis using the Rietveld method from Reatica software has obtained a shift value from the cellulose Iα parameter to the database model, while the cellulose Iβ does not change significantly. From the refinement of the XRD diffractogram, the molar percentage value for cellulose Iα is 20.67% and cellulose Iβ is 79.33% which confirms that there has been a transformation of cellulose Iα to cellulose Iβ. This transformation was further confirmed by morphological analysis using the Transmission Electron Microscope (TEM), where the SAED TEM pattern describes the orientation of the hkl plane for cellulose Iβ (002) with d-spacing of 3.353 Å. Analysis of the Scanning Electron Microscope (SEM) pattern from CNC Cladophora informed that the CNC width distribution value was 60.82±1.25 nm and the external pore volume size (macroscopic) was 233.16 nm3. Specific surface area analysis using the Brunauer-Emmett-Teller (BET) method obtained the specific surface area value is 233.6 m2/g, the average pore radius is 3.663 nm and the total pore volume value is 0.4279 cc/g. The large value of specific surface area makes CNC Cladophora a promising adsorber material.