Heterogeneity and Specificity of Nanoscale Adhesion Forces Measured between Self-Assembled Monolayers and Lignocellulosic Substrates: A Chemical Force Microscopy Study

Lack of fundamental understanding of cellulase interactions with different plant cell wall components during cellulose saccharification hinders progress toward achieving an economic production of biofuels from renewable plant biomass. Here, chemical force microscopy (CFM) was utilized to quantify the interactions between two surfaces that model either hydrophilic or hydrophobic functional groups of cellulases and a set of lignocellulosic substrates prepared through Kraft, sulfite, or organosolv pulping with defined chemical composition. The measured forces were then decoupled into specific and nonspecific components using the Poisson statistical approach. Heterogeneities in the distributions of forces as a function of the pretreatment method were mapped. Our results showed that hydrophobic domains and chemical moieties involved in hydrogen bonding and polar interactions were homogeneously distributed on all substrates but with distribution densities that varied with the type of the pretreatment method used to prepare substrates. In addition, we showed that increasing surface lignin coverage increased the heterogeneity of the substrates. When forces were decoupled, our results indicated that xylan reduced the strength of hydrogen bonding between the hydrophilic model surface and substrates. Permanent dipole–dipole interactions dominated the adhesion of the hydrophilic model surface to lignosulfonates, whereas hydrophobic interactions facilitated the adhesion of the hydrophobic model surface to Kraft lignin. We further showed that the structure of lignin determines the type of forces that dominate lignocellulosic interactions with other surfaces. Our findings suggest that nonproductive binding of cellulases to lignocellulosic biomass can be reduced by altering the hydrophobicity and/or chemical moieties involved in the polar interactions and by utilizing organosolv as a pretreatment method