1. Establishing superfine nanofibrils for robust polyelectrolyte artificial spider silk and powerful artificial muscles
- Author
-
Wenqian He, Meilin Wang, Guangkai Mei, Shiyong Liu, Abdul Qadeer Khan, Chao Li, Danyang Feng, Zihao Su, Lili Bao, Ge Wang, Enzhao Liu, Yutian Zhu, Jie Bai, Meifang Zhu, Xiang Zhou, and Zunfeng Liu
- Subjects
Science - Abstract
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−3 to 0.53 GPa and 700 MJ m−3, 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.
- Published
- 2024
- Full Text
- View/download PDF