Green chemicals and process to graft cellulose fibers.

The treatment of additive-free hand sheet paper samples with cold plasma was carried out and showed that cellulose can be chemically linked with reactive natural products, namely myrcene (My) and limonene (LM). Contact-angle measurement and X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy (XPS) were used to ascertain the occurrence of the grafting. Indeed, the contact-angle value of a drop of water deposited at the surface of paper increased from 30 degrees for unmodified substrate to about 105 and 107 degrees, for LM- and My-treated samples, respectively.