Materials Sciences and Applications, 2021, 12, 561-577 https://www.scirp.org/journal/msa ISSN Online: 2153-1188 ISSN Print: 2153-117X DOI: 10.4236/msa.2021.1212037 Dec. 7, 2021 561 Materials Sciences and Applications Obtaining and Characterization of Biodegradable Composites Reinforced with Microcrystalline Cellulose Fillers Lucas Viana Costa, Gisele C. Valle Iulianelli, Paulo Sérgio Rangel C. da Silva, Fernanda A. dos Santos Instituto de Macromoléculas Professora Eloisa Mano, Universidade Federal do Rio de Janeiro, Rio de Janeiro, Brazil Abstract In recent years, there has been a growing discussion about the problems re- lated to the massive use of many synthetic plastic materials, which inevitably leads to an increase in environmental pollution caused by the inappropriate disposal of these materials. In this sense, biodegradable materials have been a subject of great interest, as they are a real alternative to replace these mate- rials and tackle this issue. In this work, fully biodegradable composites were prepared by solution casting method. Microcrystalline cellulose (MCC) and treated microcrystalline cellulose (TMCC) were separately incorporated into biodegradable PLA and PHB matrices at ratios of 3, 5 and 7 wt% and the properties of the obtained biocomposites were evaluated by TGA, DSC, XRD and TD-NMR. From thermal analyses, it was seen that TMCC resulted in better thermal stability and 3 wt% of filler, in general, promoted a more pro- nounced thermal improvement. Furthermore Tg, Tc and Tm remained prac- tically unchanged after MCC and TMCC addition. From XRD it was seen that the cellulose fillers influence in different ways the matrices, promoting increase or decrease in the degree of crystallinity. Finally, the results obtained by TD-NMR showed a decrease in the T 1 H values for all prepared biocompo- sites, indicating a good dispersion of the cellulose fillers in the matrices and pointed that the systems containing 3 wt% of cellulose fillers were the most homogeneous formulations. Keywords PHB, PLA, Microcrystalline Cellulose, Biocomposites, TGA, DSC, XRD, TD-NMR How to cite this paper: Costa, L.V., Iulia- nelli, G.C.V., da Silva, P.S.R.C. and dos Santos, F.A. (2021) Obtaining and Charac- terization of Biodegradable Composites Reinforced with Microcrystalline Cellulose Fillers. Materials Sciences and Applications, 12, 561-577. https://doi.org/10.4236/msa.2021.1212037 Received: October 29, 2021 Accepted: December 4, 2021 Published: December 7, 2021 Copyright © 2021 by author(s) and Scientific Research Publishing Inc. This work is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution International License (CC BY 4.0). http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ Open Access