The difficulty of dispersing cellulose nanofibers (CNFs) in
hydrophobic polymers such as poly(lactic acid) (PLA) remains a major
obstacle to the expansion of cellulose nanocomposite applications. In this
work, we employed the solvent evaporation technique commonly used for
drug microencapsulation to suspend PLA in water as microparticles. The
suspension of the microparticles was easily mixed with the CNFs prepared by
high-pressure homogenization. Water removal by membrane filtration
produced CNF sheetsfilled with the particles. Compression molding of the
stacked sheets resulted in nanocomposites with good CNF dispersions. Increases in the modulus and strength (up to 58% and
210%, respectively) demonstrated the load-bearing capability of the CNF network in the composites.