Digital cellulose

Digital cellulose is cellulose combined with electro-active materials to create functionality and which can communicate in a digital world yet remain sustainable and eco-friendly. Application areas could be active packaging which can sense and adapt to the surroundings or the creation of large scales rolls with paper that holds charge.

What if the pack could tell you that it's been exposed to humidity? Or if we could minimize food waste. Perhaps we can create novel products or produce textiles with cellulose as a basis?

Power Paper - By combining cellulose or nanocellulose with conducting polymers we've created a black paper with astonishing properties. The paper is rubbery to touch and possible to manufacture in large quantities, with low input costs. It holds four world records, making it suitable to act as a battery or supercap. For more info, please see article at the LiU webpage.

• Highest charge and capacitance in organic electronics, 1 C and 2 F (Coulomb and Farad).
• Highest measured current in an organic conductor, 1 A (Ampere).
• Highest capacity to simultaneously conduct ions and electrons.
• Highest transconductance in a transistor, 1 S (Siemens)

The academic publication in Advanced Science y 2015 with scientists from LiU och RISE: An Organic Mixed Ion-Electron Conductor for Power Electronics

Supercaps, or capacitances with specific properties, can be charged and then quickly release charge. At the Printed Electronics Arena in Norrköping, Sweden, we've created small series of supercaps based on the learnings around the Power Paper and in several projects demonstrated the possibilities for upscaling and reproducibility.

Optoelektronic paper is a paper modified with zinc oxide which creates paper with built-in functionality. We've created a tonne to show it's possible to produce industrially! With printing technology the paper can then be further modified to create sensory functions - one example is printed UV sensors and in the future we might use this concept to clean water through photo-catalysis. Curious? Get in touch!

Within RISE and in Sweden there are massive efforts in cellulose research as cellulose exists naturally and is a fundamental building block in nature, in trees and other plants. It's the most abundant polymer in the world. Did you know that we can 3D-print canoes and furniture in wood? RISE has also recently developed the world's strongest biomaterial from nanocellulose and a new competence center has been created together with Swedish industry with specific focus on Digital Cellulose, the DCC.