The European project DiStruc (“Directed Structure at the meso-scale”) is a Marie Curie Innovative Training Network providing integrated training for 15 young researchers in the field of soft condensed matter. Partners from 6 different European countries interact within the network, including universities, research institutions and industrial companies.

As part of the project’s scientific goal to understand and direct structure formation in dispersions of elongated colloidal particles, Canoe is working on the exploitation of this knowledge in order to develop innovative and low-cost high performance composite fibers from bio-resources. More specifically, the structure and properties of lignin-nanocomposite-fibers prepared by wet-spinning processing will be studied. These fibers may serve as novel precursors for the manufacturing of carbon fibers.