Fabrication and Characterization of Rice Straw Nanocellulose Nanocomposites

The main goal of this work was to use rice straw nanocellulose in the production of nanocomposites using epoxy resin. The chemo-mechanical treatment was used to produce rice straw nanocellulose powder. The treatment was done to evaluate the effect of such treatment on the performance of produced nanocomposites. The morphology and crystallinity of the nanocomposites was further observed. The Field Emission Scanning Electron Microscopy (FESEM) images show that the surface morphology of rice straw nanocellulose nanocomposite was homogenous in epoxy compared to rice straw powder nanocomposite. X-ray Diffraction (XRD) pattern showed that the addition of 1% of filler (rice straw powder and rice straw nanocellulose) in the epoxy matrix does not result in any significant changes on its crystallinity. Thus, the analysis provided the information that there was no transformation to the trans-crystalline phase in the system interface.