Enhancing quartz fiber dispersibility and wettability with bacterial cellulose for high-performance quartz paper

Quartz fibers are distinguished by their exceptional thermal resistance and mechanical strength, making them ideal for advanced quartz papers and composite materials. However, their intrinsic tendency to aggregate and limited wettability with silica sols restricts their mechanical properties and broader applications. This study proposed a bacterial cellulose (BC)-mediated strategy to overcome these challenges by enhancing quartz fiber dispersibility, hydrophilicity, and interfacial compatibility. BC's abundant hydroxyl (OH) groups formed hydrogen bonds with silanol (SiOH) groups on quartz fiber surfaces, significantly improving hydrophilicity and silica sol interactions. Additionally, BC facilitated electrostatic adsorption of dodecyl dimethylamine oxide (OB-2), enhancing foam stability and preventing fiber aggregation during preparation. The quartz paper was prepared by foam forming technology. At an optimal BC addition of 0.03 %, the quartz paper achieved front and reverse evenness values of 49.1 and 48.1, tensile strength of 121.04 N, and tensile stress of 10.9 MPa-72.7-fold higher than unmodified paper. Silica sol adsorption capacity and rate increased by 35.6 % and 53.3 %, respectively. This scalable modification method enhances quartz paper's performance and unlocks broader applications of quartz fibers in next-generation composite materials.