The Effect of Temperature and Shear on the Gelation of Cellulose Nanocrystals in Deep Eutectic Solvents

With the flourishing development of 3D printing technology, the demand for printing materials has been increasing rapidly in recent years. In particular, physical gels formed by cellulose nanocrystals (CNCs) exhibit suitable shear-thinning behavior, high storage moduli, and high yield stresses for extrusion-based printing. While most studies use water as the dispersing medium to form CNC percolated gels, the dispersing behavior of CNCs in alternative solvents, such as deep eutectic solvents (DESs), has not been fully explored. Especially, DESs have low volatility and good ionic conductivity to form functional ionogels. Precise control of the rheological properties and selection of suitable dispersion processes continue to pose significant challenges. In light of this, we have devised a novel dispersion process employing thermal and shear treatments to facilitate the gelation of CNCs within DESs. A crude dispersion of CNCs in the DES underwent thermal treatment to partially remove the surface sulfate ester on CNCs. As a result, the repulsive force between CNCs decreases. A second shear then significantly increases the strength of CNC/DES gels potentially because of the increased rod-rod contacts. This approach enables the formation of high-strength gels at low concentrations of CNCs. Both thermal treatment and a second shear are crucial to forming strong percolated CNC gels. In short, we showed a simple strategy to facilitate the dispersion and gelation of CNCs for direct ink writing.