Abstract
Crystallite refers to a single crystalline grain in crystal aggregates, and multiple crystallites form a grain boundary or the inter-crystallite interface. A grain boundary is a structural defect that hinders the efficient directional transfer of mechanical stress or thermal phonons in crystal aggregates. We observed that grain boundaries within an aggregate of a-few-nanometers-wide fibrillar crystallites of cellulose were crystallized by enhancing their inter-crystallite interactions; multiple crystallites were coupled into single fusion crystals without passing through a melting or dissolving state. Accordingly, the crystallinity of naturally occurring cellulose, which has previously been considered irreversible once decreased, was recovered, and the thermal energy transfer in the aggregate was significantly improved. Other fibrillar crystallites of chitin also showed a similar fusion phenomenon by enhancing the inter-crystallite interactions. Crystallite fusion in aggregates may occur for other biopolymers.
Thermal energy transfer around buried pipe infrastructure
