Tough poly(ethylene glycol)-sized bacterial cellulose sheet for high impact strength laminated acrylic composites

[Display omitted] Dried and well-consolidated sheet of bacterial cellulose (BC) nanofibrils is a material structure that possesses high modulus and strength but is also brittle, which limits its potential in various advanced composite applications. Here, we report a simple method of enhancing the toughness of BC sheet by sizing the BC nanofibrils with poly(ethylene glycol) (PEG). This hinders interfibril hornification and facilitates large-scale BC nanofibril debonding, slippage and reorientation upon deformation. The PEG-sized BC sheets show high tensile strain-at-failure and work of fracture compared to neat BC sheet. PEG-sized BC reinforced laminated acrylic composites achieve a flatwise Charpy impact strength of up to 26 kJ m−2. This is a remarkable increase over the impact strength of neat impact-modified acrylic of only 12 kJ m−2, especially when the BC loading required to achieve this radical improvement is only 0.2 wt-%. Our study opens new paradigm in using low BC loading to achieve performance improvements suitable for high value composite applications.