Institut Charles Sadron Event

The constant evolution of society in response to environmental issues, climate change, and dwindling resources requires the development of more sustainable materials capable of meeting increasingly complex specifications. Bio-based and bio-inspired materials offer strong potential to replace, in the near future, conventional materials derived from the petroleum industry. Through evolutionary selection, nature has optimized and selected multifunctional materials with sophisticated hierarchical organization and remarkable optical and/or mechanical properties, achieved simply by combining a limited number of building blocks via self-assembly under mild conditions. The exceptional performance of these natural materials has inspired scientists to design new materials with superior performance. In this context, we have developed a simple and adaptable strategy based on the combination of layer-by-layer (LbL) assembly and grazing-incidence spraying (GIS) to fabricate multifunctional composite materials based on nanocellulose, presenting a complex hierarchical structure and anisotropic mechanical properties. This work examines the influence of the nature, aspect ratio, and orientation of the nano-objects, as well as the composition, structure, and deposition conditions, on the growth of the films and their mechanical properties.