Progress and Prospects on Construction Strategies of Cellulose Nanocrystals-Based Materials

Cellulose nanocrystals (CNC) are a kind of sustainable nanoparticles from biomass, which are expected to be widely used in the fields of composite reinforcement and functionalization due to their highly controllable mechanical properties and surface properties. Furthermore, their intrinsic rod-like morphology and orderly crystal structure have great advantages in the sensors and anti-counterfeiting of chiral and oriented array assembly optics. In this review, we described their unique advantages in material applications due to their rod-like morphologies and crystalline structures of biocompatible nanoparticles, as well as their dimension-related effects and multi-level structures. Controlling the surface structure and physicochemical property of CNC played a key role in developing related high-performance and multi-function materials. Thus, we focused on the mechanism and methods of controlling the surface structure and properties of CNC, along with its steric and spatial dimension effect. The chemical regulation strategies covered the changes in interaction mode, degree of system interface interaction, network structure and percolation behavior. We further discussed the performance-improvement and functionalization methods based on controlling the interactions between materials in the multicomponent complex phase/system, along with the assembly-control methods on the chiral and achiral array of CNC for luminescence-enhanced optical anti-counterfeiting, including the adjusting mechanisms and optimization methods of the micro-environment structure and field effects. In the end, we prospected the design, development, and construction methods of new CNC materials, as an important way and application expansion to provide a theoretical guidance and practical reference for the application basic research of natural polymer modified materials and the construction of high-performance multifunctional materials.