Nanomechanics of silk: the fundamentals of a strong, tough and versatile material

Su, Isabelle; Buehler, Markus J.

doi:10.1088/0957-4484/27/30/302001

Cited by 49 publications

(49 citation statements)

References 110 publications

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“…3 and 4, Figure g), whereas the PVA/Alg/HAP hybrid macrofiber has no yield point. In general, the yield point of natural SSF is reached along with the stretching of the tough non‐crystalline protein block, and then, the crystalline protein block is used to dissipate the applied stress energy . In our hybrid macrofiber system, the hybrid macrofiber is constructed by numerous tightly stacked microfibers, which are mineralized with HAP nanocrystals.…”

Section: Resultsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Biomimetic Mineralized Organic–Inorganic Hybrid Macrofiber with Spider Silk‐Like Supertoughness

Zhao

et al. 2019

Adv Funct Materials

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Spider silk fibers (SSF) have a hierarchical structure composed of proteins with highly repetitive sequences and biomineralization is sophisticated in hierarchical organic-inorganic constructions. By using inorganic hydroxyapatite (HAP) and organic polyvinyl alcohol (PVA) to simulate the rigid crystalline and flexible amorphous protein blocks of SSF, respectively, biomimetic mineralization is herein attempted for the large-scale preparation of SSF-like macrofibers with a hierarchical ordered structure, a superhigh tensile strength of 949 ± 38 MPa, a specific toughness of 296 ± 12 J g −1 , and a stretch ability of 80.6%. The hybrid macrofibers consist of microfibers, and their outstanding performance (e.g., extreme tolerance to temperatures ranging from −196 to 80 °C and superior ability to inhibit the transverse growth of cracks) is attributed to the hierarchical arrangement as well as the organic-inorganic integrated structure within the oriented mineralized polymer chains. The biomineralization-inspired technique provides a promising tactic that can be used to synthesize functional organicinorganic fibers that are structurally complex and, furthermore, industrially manufacture SSF-like artificial fibers with a supertoughness.

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Section: Resultsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Biomimetic Mineralized Organic–Inorganic Hybrid Macrofiber with Spider Silk‐Like Supertoughness

Zhao

et al. 2019

Adv Funct Materials

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“…to glue sheets of cellulose together, giving high toughness during mechanical testing (18). This is interesting because high toughness is a characteristic property of natural spider silk proteins (29). We found that the toughness provided by CBM-ADF3-CBM was connected to the way it was assembled.…”

Section: S C I E N C E a D V A N C E S | R E S E A R C H A R T I C L Ementioning

confidence: 86%

Biomimetic Composites with Enhanced Toughening Using Silk Inspired Triblock Proteins and Aligned Nanocellulose Reinforcements

Mohammadi

Aranko²,

Landowski³

et al. 2019

Preprint

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Silk and cellulose are biopolymers that show a high potential as future sustainable materials.They also have complementary properties, suitable for combination in composite materials where cellulose would form the reinforcing component and silk the tough matrix. Therein, a major challenge concerns balancing structure and properties in the assembly process. We used recombinant proteins with triblock architecture combining structurally modified spider silk with terminal cellulose affinity modules. Flow-alignment of cellulose nanofibrils and triblock protein allowed a continuous fiber production.The protein assembly involved phase separation into concentrated coacervates, with subsequent conformational switching from disordered structures to beta sheets. This gave the matrix a tough adhesiveness, forming a new composite material with high strength and stiffness combined with increased toughness. We show that versatile design possibilities in protein engineering enable new fully biological materials, and emphasize the key role of controlled assembly at multiple length scales for realization.

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“…(Federici et al 2001;Smirnov et al 2015;Glaser et al 2006;Pan et al 2016;Ma et al 2017), mainly due to its high melting point, excellent high-temperature mechanical properties, good sputtering resistance, and low deuterium/tritium retention (Yih and Wang 1979;Chen et al 2008;Wang et al 2016;Yang et al 2016). It is well known that the nano-sized materials possess much better electronic, mechanical, and chemical properties than the traditional bulk materials (Mistry et al 2016;Tian et al 2013;Salorinne et al 2016;Gilbert et al 2004;Zhu et al 2016;Monti et al 2016;Guo et al 2015;Su and Buehler 2016;Qi et al 2009;Qi and Lee 2010). In this respect, various nano-sized W samples have been fabricated experimentally by means of such techniques as mechanical alloying and single damascene process flow (Steinh gl et al 2005;Wang et al 2007;Yeong and Thong 2006).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Phase transition and mechanical properties of tungsten nanomaterials from molecular dynamic simulation

2017

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Molecular dynamic simulation is used to systematically find out the effects of the size and shape of nanoparticles on phase transition and mechanical properties of W nanomaterials. It is revealed that the bodycentered cubic (BCC) to face-centered cubic (FCC) phase transition could only happen in cubic nanoparticles of W, instead of the shapes of sphere, octahedron, and rhombic dodecahedron, and that the critical number to trigger the phase transition is 5374 atoms. Simulation also shows that the FCC nanocrystalline W should be prevented due to its much lower tensile strength than its BCC counterpart and that the octahedral and rhombic dodecahedral nanoparticles of W, rather than the cubic nanoparticles, should be preferred in terms of phase transition and mechanical properties. The derived results are discussed extensively through comparing with available observations in the literature to provide a deep understanding of W nanomaterials.

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Nanomechanics of silk: the fundamentals of a strong, tough and versatile material

Cited by 49 publications

References 110 publications

Biomimetic Mineralized Organic–Inorganic Hybrid Macrofiber with Spider Silk‐Like Supertoughness

Biomimetic Mineralized Organic–Inorganic Hybrid Macrofiber with Spider Silk‐Like Supertoughness

Biomimetic Composites with Enhanced Toughening Using Silk Inspired Triblock Proteins and Aligned Nanocellulose Reinforcements

Phase transition and mechanical properties of tungsten nanomaterials from molecular dynamic simulation

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