Water is not just a universal solvent that remains unaffected by its interactions. Recent studies from North Carolina State University reveal that water can alter its solubility characteristics depending on what it interacts with. When water interacts with cellulose, it can stack in layered shells to control chemical reactions within and physical properties of the material. This discovery has implications for more sustainable and efficient design of cellulose-based products.
“Cellulose is the world’s most abundant biopolymer, and it’s used in applications that range from bandages to electronics,” says Lucian Lucia, professor of forest biomaterials and chemistry at NC State and corresponding author of a new study in Matter. “But cellulose processing has been mostly done by trial and error, and some of it utilizes incredibly harsh chemicals. To find better ways to process cellulose, we need to understand its most fundamental interactions—for example, with water.”
To understand these interactions, Lucia worked with colleague Jim Martin, professor of chemistry at NC State, who studies the fundamental properties of water as a solvent.
“Water has the uncanny ability to change characteristics depending on what it’s with, which gives it a wide range of solubility characteristics,” Martin says. Martin is the author of an opinion piece in Matter that is a companion to Lucia’s study.
“We change the nature of water by what we dissolve in it, and by the concentrations of those solutes in water,” Martin says. “Think of the continuum between Kool-Aid and hard candy. You start with sugar. In Kool-Aid, the sugar is completely dissolved. As you remove the water, you get taffy, then hard candy, then back to crystalline sugar.”
2023-05-04 05:00:03
Link from phys.org