Engineering Commons^™

Determining The Efficacy Of A Silica And Bacterial Cellulose Composite Model System, Hannah Martin, Daisy Kamp

Materials Engineering

Bacterial cellulose (BC) is a sustainable alternative to petroleum-based polymer films for synthetic leather applications. Synthesized by a symbiotic culture of bacteria and yeast, BC is a three-dimensional structure composed of cellulose microfibrils. However, pure BC lacks certain desirable properties such as high tensile strength. Previous studies have shown that loading BC with nanoparticles to form nanocomposites has improved BC’s mechanical properties. However, this was not studied as a function of particle size. This study focuses on using silica/BC nanocomposites to model the impact that particle size and silica soaking concentrations have on the uptake efficiency of these particles into …