Cellulose as a Material for Future Technological Applications

Cellulose is used as a fuel and building material ever since the emergence of human civilizations. During the later centuries and especially toward the Middle Ages, cellulose had applications in paper and textile manufacturing and thereby paved way for the development of industries. In recent years, cellulose materials have many interesting usages in several common devices globally. As a consequence of the thrust for the development of more ecofriendly devices and to curb the climatic changes and environmental pollution due to non-degradable materials, there is a booming interest toward the development of cellulose-based energy and fuel storage devices because they are biodegradable. Grafting, coupling reactions, and crystallization were some of the methods used for building the cellulose-based functional materials. Currently, there are some interesting developments where cellulose material qualifies as green technology substitutes and also exhibits new interesting behavior as crystallization inhibitor and consequently assisting the formation of desired solid forms in large scale manufacturing processes like pharmaceutical formulations. Other cellulose-based applications include paper batteries as electrochemical energy storage devices, bioelectronics, nano cellulose-based substrates in perovskites solar cells, biosensors, drug delivery systems, and pharmaceutical formulations with improved physicochemical properties, etc. With all its unique properties like environment compatible biodegradability and large-scale global supply, cellulose can play a lead role as a material in several appliances in the future.