Rod-shaped silica promotes cellulose hydrolysis by inducing interior structural breakage via penetrated breaking

Solid acid catalysts have attracted much attention in cellulose hydrolysis due to their high product selectivity, easy preparation and reusability. However, most current researches only focus on modifying their surface functional groups but overlook the impact of carrier shape on hydrolytic performance. Herein, we synthesize a series of rod-shaped silica with varying sizes for cellulose hydrolysis to analyze the shape mode to enhance the breaking of cellulose structure during solid-solid reaction. Experimental results show rod-shaped silica produces particular penetrating mode to enter into the interior of cellulose and thus causing strong disruption. This mode quickly disrupts the aggregated structure of cellulose, fragmenting it in a short time. The cellulose fragments are rapidly converted to glucose in a 0.02 M H⁺ solution. This process achieves an 83.92 % cellulose conversion rate and a 52.98 % glucose yield. The discovery suggests a new strategy to design one-dimensional solid catalyst for the efficient hydrolysis of cellulose to sugar.