Tailored higher performance silicone elastomer with nanofibrillated cellulose through acidic treatment

Abstract Nanofibrillated cellulose (NFC) can be used for reinforcer to silicone polymer to expect enhancement of its mechanical strength. However, NFC is a hydrophilic material, which typically poor‐dispersed characteristic in non‐polar polymer matrices. To overcome this bothersome characteristic, surface modification of NFC has been studied to tailor the interfacial interactions between NFC and matrices for fiber dispersibility in matrices. In this work, NFC was treated with some acids to modify a functional group in NFC. The acid treatment approaches successfully introduced the functional groups onto NFC surface, which confirmed by FT‐IR, TGA, and SEM‐EDS analyses. Moreover, the XRD analysis revealed that this treated NFC was the cellulose type I and acid treatments did not vary it. The TGA results showed lower thermal degradation of all treated NFC as compared to control NFC. Additionally, the effects of treated NFC as nanofiller in the silicone elastomer were evaluated the mechanical properties. The treated NFC also showed a good dispersibility in silicone composite, and no agglomeration was observed. Moreover, the tensile strength and elongation of silicone composite with treated NFC as nanofiller showed high performance compare to silicone composite with pristine NFC. The highest tensile value was recorded at 3.4 MPa in silicone/NFC‐P samples using phosphoric acid‐treated NFC. Therefore, a low concentration of acid treatments has the potential to be an effective method as a surface modification of NFC.