The cellulose microfibril as an imperfect array of elementary fibrils.
Cellulose microfibrils are viewed as imperfect array of elementary fibrils. We have investigated the possible defects in Valonia cellulose microfibrils, which are such that the microfibrils can be broken into elementary fibrils by deformation, but are not sufficient to allow for a small angle maximum corresponding to the elementary fibril dimension. The microfibril has been constructed by convolution of th elementary fibril with a two dimensional point lattice. Defects have been incorporated in the microfibril, first by introduction of gaps between the elementary fibrils. These regular gaps were then replaced by a statistical distribution of the elementary fibrils about the lattice points, modeled by Hosemann distortions of the first type. The cylindrically averaged transforms of such structures show that significant distortions can be incorporated within the microfibril without producing large scale changes in the equatorial intensity distribution. Larger distortions are necessary before a small angle maximum corresponding to the 35 A elementary fibril is predicted, by which stage the wide angle x-ray pattern is unacceptable.