1. Cellulose and cellulosic materials

1.1 Cellulose structure

Cellulose's main function is to maintain the structure of plants and other living organisms. Its chemical structure is shown in figure 1 . It is a carbohydrate made up of linear chains of D-glucose molecules linked together to form a linear polymer, but transversely they can develop intermolecular bonds of the hydrogen bond type. The repeating unit (monomer unit) composed of two glucose units is called "cellobiose". Thanks to these intermolecular interactions, cellulose takes the form of filaments resulting from the linear association of crystallites (figure