In recent years, nanomaterials have displayed potential in effective detection and removal of greenhouse gases, chemical contaminants, organic pollutants, and biological agents. These materials come in various morphologies and have various functions (e.g., adsorbents, catalysts, or membranes). The high reactivity and high surface area of nanomaterials are some of the notable features which provide an advantage in environmental remediation over other conventional alternatives.
Given the abundance of plant resources, plant extracts are the most studied category to date for the synthesis of green nanomaterials. Cellulose is one of the most abundant and pervasive bioipolymers on earth. Cellulose based raw materials have been traditionally used in many fields, because of their unique advantages including renewability, biocompaitiblity, low cost, natural biodegradability and chemical stability. It has been used as an engineering material for thousands of years and continues to be used today in forest products such as paper, textiles, etc. Novel cellulose based functional materials, such as cellulose hydrogel, aerogel and porous materials have been developed in various fields.
Nanocellulose (NC) is one of the most interesting nature-based nanomaterials and is attracting attention in a myriad of fields such as biomaterials, engineering, biomedicine, opto/electronic devices, nanocomposites, textiles, cosmetics and food products. The nanomaterial can be extracted from plant cellulose pulp or synthesized by non-pathogenic bacteria.
Bacterial cellulose nanopaper (BC) is a multifunctional material known for numerous desirable properties: sustainability, biocompatibility, biodegradability, optical transparency, thermal properties, flexibility, high mechanical strength, hydrophilicity, high porosity, broad chemical-modification capabilities and high surface area.
Renewable nanocellulose is being utilized for next generation of ‘green’ electronic devices owing to its low roughness, good thermal stability and excellent optical properties. NC-based platforms could be considered an emerging technology to fabricate efficient, simple, cost-effective and disposable optical/electrical analytical devices for several (bio)sensing applications including health care, diagnostics, environmental monitoring, food quality control, forensic analysis and physical sensing. Various proof-of-concept transparent nanopaper-based electronic devices have been fabricated; these devices exhibit excellent flexibility, bendability and even foldability.
Currently, nanocellulose is under active research for a myriad of applications including filtration, wound dressing, pollution removal approaches and flexible and transparent electronics. Daio Paper Corp., has recently launched a paper toilet cleaner made from cellluose nanofibers (CNF) and Nippon Paper Industries has established Japan’s largest cellulose nanofiber (CNF) production line at its plant in the city of Ishinomaki with a planned annual production of 500 tons.
Many of the (bio)sensors that are currently based on plastic, glass or conventional paper platforms are predicted to transferred to NC and this generation of (bio)sensing platforms could revolutionize the conventional sensing technology.
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