Date of Award

Spring 5-6-2020

Level of Access Assigned by Author

Open-Access Thesis

Degree Name

Doctor of Philosophy (PhD)

Department

Chemistry

Advisor

Michael D. Mason

Second Committee Member

Carl P. Tripp

Third Committee Member

Scott D. Collins

Additional Committee Members

William M. Gramlich

Robert W. Muelenberg

Abstract

Cellulose based hydrogels and porous materials are gaining significant attention across a wide range of applications due to the natural abundance, biodegradability and physicochemical tunability of this polysaccharide. Cellulose nanofibrils (CNF) outperform cellulose fibers in terms of physicochemical tunability since CNF possess relatively high surface area. However, superior dispersibility of CNF in aqueous phase makes it challenging for traditional methods to dewater CNF suspensions to fabricate robust hydrogels and porous materials. In this dissertation, a novel scalable capillary based method to dewater CNF suspensions is invented as well as CNF hydrogels and porous materials with a broad range of porosity and mechanical properties were generated. CNF hydrogels and porous materials were further modified by creating a chemically crosslinked semi-interpenetrating (semi-IPN) network in the CNF matrices to enhance the mechanical robustness of these materials. Silver Nanoparticles have been incorporated xix into these semi-IPN networks to generate robust surface enhanced Raman scattering (SERS) substrates for trace level detection and quantification of organic molecules.

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