X-ray diffraction study of bamboo fibers treated with NaOH

Bamboo fibers are a new kind of natural materials which have a big potential application in textile field due to some of their particular properties. However, high crystallinity and orientation structure can result in some undesirable properties and this will limit their further applications as textile materials. As a common used way, mercerization was adapted to treat bamboo fibers in this work in order to improve their undesirable properties. X-ray diffraction (XRD) was used to characterize their microstructure after treatment with NaOH. The amount of cellulose II and the crystallinity index based on the XRD results were calculated for the evaluation of the effectiveness of the different treatment conditions, such as alkali concentration, mercerization duration and temperature, as well as tension applied to the fibers during mercerization, on the transformation degree of cellulose I to cellulose II and decrystallization of the mercerized bamboo fibers. It has been found that each condition has different effects and that the greatest effectiveness of crystal lattice conversion and decrystallization could be achieved with such mercerization condition: 16 % alkali concentration, 10 minutes of mercerization at 20 °C without tension applied to the fibers.