Establishing superfine nanofibrils for robust polyelectrolyte artificial spider silk and powerful artificial muscles.
basic_science · Level V
Where this comes from
- Record sourced from PubMed, PMID 38664427.
- Also identified by DOI 10.1038/s41467-024-47796-2 and PMC identifier 11045855.
- Licence recorded as CC BY.
- The licence permits redistribution, so the abstract is shown in full and the full text is available from the publisher.
Abstract
Spider silk exhibits an excellent combination of high strength and toughness, which originates from the hierarchical self-assembled structure of spidroin during fiber spinning. In this work, superfine nanofibrils are established in polyelectrolyte artificial spider silk by optimizing the flexibility of polymer chains, which exhibits combination of breaking strength and toughness ranging from 1.83 GPa and 238 MJ m<sup>-3</sup> to 0.53 GPa and 700 MJ m<sup>-3</sup>, respectively. This is achieved by introducing ions to control the dissociation of polymer chains and evaporation-induced self-assembly under external stress. In addition, the artificial spider silk possesses thermally-driven supercontraction ability. This work provides inspiration for the design of high-performance fiber materials.
Medical subject headings
- Nanofibers
- Spiders
- Silk
- Polyelectrolytes