Stimuli-responsive cellulose paper materials

Cellulose paper derived from plants has served as a carrier of cultural inheritance since it was invented 2000 years ago. It attracted more and more attentions in recent years working as a versatile platform to develop functional materials because of its good flexibility, sustainability, biodegradability, low cost and great capability to be modified. Once be functionalized, such as modified with stimuli-responsive polymers, small molecules or inorganic particles, papers may be sensitive to external stimuli from environments and consequently find applications in wide ranges including protein separation, controlled drug release, switchable surfaces, sensoring devices and smart substrates with various colors, etc. However, there are no reviews summarized the progress of such exciting research field. Here in this mini review, we discussed the advantages of cellulose paper as stimuli-responsive substrate and summarized the fabrication techniques, properties and applications of various stimuli-responsive papers reported to date which are triggered by temperature, pH, humidity, ions, light, magnetic field, solvent, gas and biomolecules. Additionally, challenges and outlooks of the future development of such materials were also given in the end.