A novel thermotropic liquid crystalline – Benzoylated bacterial cellulose

Using the esterification of bacterial cellulose (BC), we have synthesized Benzoylated bacterial cellulose (BBC). The molecular structure of the BBC was characterized by means of Fourier transform infrared (FT-IR) spectroscopy, 1H and 13C nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR). The BBC is found to display thermotropic liquid crystalline feature determined with differential scanning calorimetry (DSC), polarized optical microscope (POM) and wide-angle X-ray diffraction (WAXD). Here, we demonstrate that it is possible to obtain the BBC with degree of substitution (DS) from 0.88 to 2.46 by applying the different molar ratio of benzoyl chloride to the anhydrous glucose unit (AGU). The glass transition temperatures (Tg) of the liquid crystalline phases lie between 281.2 and 281.8 °C and the isotropic melt transition temperatures (Ti) vary from 341.6 to 362.8 °C, depending on the DS.