The macroscopic properties of wood are fundamentally derived from the properties of individual wood cells and especially their thick cell walls with much emphasis on how the cells interact with water. However, due the difficulty of seeing what happens inside the cell walls while keeping the cells intact, much remains unknown. A major component of wood cell walls is cellulose which exists in the form of crystalline microfibrils. Thus, their structure determines many macroscopic properties of wood. Despite this their exact structure remains unknown. Water-cellulose interactions are integral to the macroscopic moisture behaviour of wood and to truly understand them, knowing what happens at the molecular level is required.
Cellulose-water interactions can also be studied through molecular simulations (Paajanen et al. 2019). Calculation of a scattering pattern from a set of atomistic coordinates is a simple but computationally demanding matter. Comparing different simulation setups for cellulose to real-world measurements can shed light into what goes on in the molecular level in wood cells.
Keywords: microfibril, cellulose, moisture
Authors
Aleksi Zitting
Aalto University, Department of Bioproducts and Biosystems, Espoo, Finland
Antti Paajanen
VTT Technical Research Centre of Finland
Lauri Rautkari
Aalto University, Department of Bioproducts and Biosystems, Espoo, Finland
Paavo Penttilä
Aalto University, Department of Bioproducts and Biosystems, Espoo, Finland
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