Big internal stress and poor UV resistance are two bottlenecks of epoxy resins for light emitting diode (LED) encapsulation, and how to solve them with a green method is still a great challenge. Herein, a unique hybrid was synthesized by forming SiO2 particles on surface of cellulose, the hybridized cellulose (mCNC@SiO2) was then used to develop new high performance epoxy resin (mCNC@SiO2/EP) for LED encapsulation. The effect of the content of mCNC@SiO2 on the comprehensive performances of mCNC@SiO2/EP resins was studied. Results show that the presence of mCNC@Si-2 not only greatly reduces the internal stress and improves UV resistance, but also increases moisture resistance while maintaining high heat resistance. When the content of mCNC@SiO2 is only 2.0 wt%, the internal stress is reduced by 62%, thanking to the significant decrease in thermal expansion coefficient, and curing stress derived from the flexibility of Si-O-Si segment in mCNC@SiO2. In addition, mCNC@SiO2/EP resin has good transmittance, proving that the presence of mCNC@SiO2 can effectively alleviate yellowing and improve UV resistance. These excellent comprehensive properties of mCNC@SiO2/EP resin demonstrate that mCNC@SiO2 is a green and multifunctional modifier of epoxy resin for high performance LED encapsulation. (C) 2018 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.