Abstract
Cellulose is the most abundant biomass material in nature and it is mainly extracted from natural or lignocellulosic fibers. After purification, cellulose fibers exhibit two interesting features for their further transformation into nanomaterials: a hierarchical and multi-level strcture, and a semicrystalline microstructure. Different forms of cellulose nanomaterials, resulting from a top-down deconstructing strategy (cellulose nanocrystals (CNCs), cellulose nanofibrils (CNFs)) or bottom-up strategy (bacterial cellulose (BC)) can be prepared. Multiple mechanical shearing actions applied to cellulosic fibers release more or less the nanofibrils individually. A controlled strong acid hydrolysis treatment can be applied to cellulosic fibers allowing dissolution of non-crystalline domains. Such cellulose nanomaterials have been the focus of an exponentially increasing number of works or reviews devoted to understand such materials and their applications. They have a high potential for an emerging industry. In the nanoscale, cellulose exhibits specific properties broadening the applications of this naturally occurring polymer. An overview of existing methods for the preparation of cellulose nanomaterials and their specific properties that outperform and contrast with cellulose in the microscale is proposed.
