A simple strategy in enhancing moisture and thermal resistance and tensile properties of disintegrated bacterial cellulose nanopaper

Cellulose-based nanopaper with high moisture and thermal resistance and high tensile properties has many applications in the food packaging industry, electronics, and biosensors. The objective of the present work is to produce and characterize the disintegrated bacterial cellulose-based nanopaper film and its ZnO bionanocomposite prepared without and with compression. Addition of ZnO nanoparticles into nanopaper and compression improved the tensile and thermal properties and moisture resistance of the bionanocomposite. Compressed nanopaper film with 1.2 wt% ZnO had the highest tensile strength (TS) of 94.2 MPa and tensile modulus (TM) of 10.1 GPa. These TS and TM values were 109% and 172% higher than those of non-compressed film due to an increase in the crystal structure. Surprisingly this bionanocomposite also demonstrates higher elongation at break in comparison to the nanopaper film. All samples show good rollability and bendability. Compressed bionanocomposite had higher moisture resistance than non-compressed one. This work promotes an environmentally friendly bionanocomposite film which has good potential for food packaging applications.