Mechanism Of Disorder Genesis In Cellulose Microfibrils

We discuss the possible mechanism of genesis of disordered regions in cellulose microfibrils. In our work, we show that obstacles stopping the growth of nanofibrils and the further deformation of nanofibrils may be the reasons for disorder. In this case, the initial prismatic shape of nanofibrils becomes corrugated and regions, where cellulose chains lose their initial straight configuration, appear in it. If a pack of thus deformed nanofibrils form a microfibril, then it contains disordered regions of two types. The first one consists in boundary layers, which separate nanofibrils from each other. The second type represents amorphous regions located inside each nanofibril. In this discussion, we use the linear theory of elasticity. With its help, we estimated longitudinal dimensions of cellulose crystallites and then compared them with values of such sizes calculated based on experimental data. The experimentally obtained values turned out to be, to a certain extent, greater than the theoretically estimated ones.