Figure 4
Phase behavior of suspensions of CNCs of different origins, following various treatments or using different additives, together with representative polarizing microscopy texture examples of a fully cholesteric sample (top) and a sample with a tiny liquid crystal fraction coexisting as bright striped droplets with a black isotropic majority phase (bottom). The volume fraction φLC of the liquid crystal phase is plotted as a function of the CNC concentration, zoomed in on the investigated regime in the top diagram. The black data points are obtained with CNCs from bacterial cellulose (BC), blue with filter paper-derived CNCs (FC) and red with fresh wood pulp-derived CNCs (PC). The suffix p indicates pure CNCs, without any additive. The source of each data set is specified in the legend. The times indicated for the reference [54] series refer to the duration of sonication.
