Aerogel Microspheres from Natural Cellulose Nanofibrils and Their Application as Cell Culture Scaffold

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• 作者：Hongli Cai ; Sudhir Sharma ; Wenying Liu ; Wei Mu ; Wei Liu ; Xiaodan Zhang ; Yulin Deng
• 刊名：Biomacromolecules
• 出版年：2014
• 出版时间：July 14, 2014
• 年：2014
• 卷：15
• 期：7
• 页码：2540-2547
• 全文大小：415K
• ISSN：1526-4602

文摘

We demonstrated that ultralight pure natural aerogel microspheres can be fabricated using cellulose nanofibrials (CNF) directly. Experimentally, the CNF aqueous gel droplets, produced by spraying and atomizing through a steel nozzle, were collected into liquid nitrogen for instant freezing followed by freeze-drying. The aerogel microspheres are highly porous with bulk density as low as 0.0018 g cm^鈥?. The pore size of the cellulose aeogel microspheres ranges from nano- to macrometers. The unique ultralight and high porous structure ensured high moisture (90 g g^鈥?) and water uptake capacity (100 g g^鈥?) of the aerogel microspheres. Covalent cross-linking between the native nanofibrils and cross-linkers made the aerogel microspheres very stable even in a harsh environment. The present study also confirmed this kind of aerogel microspheres from native cellulose fibers can be used as cell culture scaffold.