Increasing emphasis has been placed on the use of renewable resources, to rely less heavily on petroleum and to better utilize global energy needs. However, the lack of rigidity of nature's materials typically limits their mass production for high-tech applications.

One promising approach to address this shortcoming is to introduce a composite material reinforced by high purity nanofibers found in nature. Cellulose nanowhiskers (CNWs) could integrate a viable nanofibrous porous candidate, resulting in superior structural diversity and functional versatility for diverse applications.

Inspired by these fascinating properties of CNWs, a fully cellulose-based composite was designed using CNW reinforcement and oriented morphology. Comparable to carbon nanotubes or Kevlar filler, CNWs introduced significant strength and directional rigidity to the composite even at 0.2% by weight, yet doubled that under a weak magnetic field of 0.3T. A designed green nanobiomaterial with an enhanced microstructure performance could potentially increase the applications of cellulose-based materials in biomimetic design.

For her research in this area, IPST doctoral student Parisa Pooyan received a $1,500 travel award for "Outstanding Poster Presentation" at the Georgia Tech Research and Innovation Conference in 2011. Her work, titled "Fabrication of a Cellulosic Nancomposite Scaffold with Improved Supermolecular Structure as a Potential Cardiovascular Tissue-Engineered Graft," by Parisa Pooyan (ME, MSE), Prof. Rina Tannenbaum (MSE), Prof. Hamid Garmestani (MSE), and Prof. Cyrus Aidun (ME), was among 30 entries selected from 400 applicants.

Parisa previously received top recognition at the Biological Materials Science Symposium in Orlando, Fla., and Best of 2012 TMS Show in All Graduate Materials Divisions. Her recent work also was presented and accepted for publication at the 2012 ISDT conference, titled “Design of a Nanobiomaterial from Renewable Resources,” by Parisa Pooyan, Prof. Rina Tannenbaum and Prof. Hamid Garmestani, in Integrated Systems, Design & Technology – Knowledge Transfer in New Technologies, Springer Book Chapter, 2012 ISDT Conference, Mallorca, Spain.