Birck Nanotechnology Center Consortium:

Printing SMART Films

Roll-to-Roll Manufacturing of Films and

Laminates Based on Cellulose Nanomaterials

Purdue investigators:

Mechanical Eng.
George Chiu
Chemistry
Alexander Wei
Jeff Youngblood (PI) Materials Eng.
Civil Eng.
Pablo Zavattieri
Sustainable Nanomanufacturing:
Creating the Industries of the Future

Industrial partners:

Forest Products
Laboratories
Thora Maltais

Why nano-cellulose laminates?

Industrial uses of multilayer laminates
- Packaging films (e.g. food packaging, trash bags)
* need flexibility, strength, chemical resistance, toughness, barriers
- Surface coatings (e.g. safety glass)
* need high strength, high-impact resistance, optical transparency
Cellulose nanocrystals
- High strength, transparency and flexibility
- Control fracture mechanism to increase toughness
- Biorenewable source-- reduced carbon footprint
cellulose
nanocrystals (CNs)

translucent CN film

Jeff Youngblood

Multilayer laminate
CNF film
Polymer
5-layer CNpolymer film

Thora Maltais

Objective 1: Solventless production

of CNpolymer nanocomposites
O

OH

O
R

O
HO

OH
O HO
O
HO

OH

HO
O

catalytic DMSO
(ball milling)

O
OH

O
O
O

CO2R

TMS

CN (surface alcohols)

N
H

N
H

TMS

TMSO
TMSO
O

(ball milling)

O
OTMS

Cellulose
nanocrystals (CNs)

Environmentally
controlled pulverizer

Scalable chemistry (grams to kilograms),

with minimal increase in carbon footprint

Targeted polymer blends: ABS,

polystyrene, rac-lactide (PLA)

Wood-derived CNs produced on pilot plant scale

CNpolymer blends:
Surface-initiated polymerizations
for increased miscibility
Thora Maltais (Wei)

OH
HO
O

O
O
O

CN-SAN

OH

N O

styrene,
acrylonitrile

HO
O

solventless
SIP

CN

O
O
O

N O

Ph
n

Thora Maltais

Objective 2: Roll-to-roll (R2R) production

of CN-based films
Microgravure (Mirwec)
for R2R lamination

Parameters for optimization:

Matching surface tension of
coating solution with substrate
R2R speed rate on coaxial
orientation of CNs
Reduction of nanoscale
defects on moving web
Reduction of residual stress
between substrate and film
Characterization of uniaxial CN alignment by
polarized optical microscopy

Reaz Chowdhury (Youngblood)

Uniaxial
alignment
Optical birefringence of
CN films (0.515 m)
Thora Maltais

Objective 3: In-line detection of defects

during R2R manufacturing
Problem:
Fast-moving R2R process: difficult to
maintain even illuminance
Uneven illuminance make defects harder
to detect

Result of detection
algorithm: Defects
can be distinguished,
even with uneven
illuminance

Solution: Algorithm for defect detection

Applicable toward morphologydependent scattering

Defects such as voids, scratches,

wrinkles and amorphous (gel) regions
can be detected automatically.

blue rectangles: defects

without dark contrast
enhancement
red rectangles: defects
with contrast enhancement

void

scratch

wrinkle

gel

Wei-Tai Chen (Chiu)

CNC laminate on PET film

using R2R process (15 m thickness);
images were captured off-line.
Thora Maltais