| Issue |
EPL
Volume 107, Number 2, July 2014
|
|
|---|---|---|
| Article Number | 28006 | |
| Number of page(s) | 5 | |
| Section | Interdisciplinary Physics and Related Areas of Science and Technology | |
| DOI | https://doi.org/10.1209/0295-5075/107/28006 | |
| Published online | 22 July 2014 | |
First experimental evidence of a giant permanent electric-dipole moment in cellulose nanocrystals
Centre de Recherche sur les Macromolécules Végétales (CERMAV) - UPR 5301 CNRS BP53, 38041 Grenoble Cedex 9, France
Received: 3 April 2014
Accepted: 1 July 2014
The existence of a permanent electric dipole in cellulose nanocrystals (CNCs) has been evidenced by designed rectangular reversing pulse experiments. Transient electric birefringence (TEB) was used to measure the orientation under electric fields of CNCs dispersed in an apolar solvent (toluene) at low volume fraction. We probed the static and the dynamic orientational behaviour of CNCs in order to evaluate both the permanent and induced electric-dipole contributions to the orientational order parameter S2. We demonstrated the presence of a permanent dipole 
of about 
Debye along the CNCs long axis. The existence of this permanent dipole can stem from the parallel arrangement of cellulose chains in a non-centrosymmetric crystallographic lattice within each CNC together with the dipole moment borne by each glucosyl monomer.
PACS: 82.70.Dd – Colloids / 77.84.Nh – Liquids, emulsions, and suspensions; liquid crystals / 61.30.Gd – Orientational order of liquid crystals; electric and magnetic field effects on order
© EPLA, 2014
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