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Solvent‐Free Plasticity and Programmable Mechanical Behaviors of Engineered Proteins
Author(s) -
Ma Chao,
Su Juanjuan,
Li Bo,
Herrmann Andreas,
Zhang Hongjie,
Liu Kai
Publication year - 2020
Publication title -
advanced materials
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 10.707
H-Index - 527
eISSN - 1521-4095
pISSN - 0935-9648
DOI - 10.1002/adma.201907697
Subject(s) - materials science , plasticity , elastomer , self healing hydrogels , ultimate tensile strength , anhydrous , supramolecular chemistry , modulus , solvent , nanotechnology , chemical engineering , composite material , polymer chemistry , organic chemistry , chemistry , molecule , engineering
Biopolymeric networks with plasticity show great competences in diverse fields owing to the combined biocompatible and mechanical characteristics. However, to realize such plasticity external complicated treatments, e.g., UV or organic solvent have to be applied, which in turn impair the biological nature and even mechanical properties of those systems. To address this challenge, one new type of anhydrous protein liquid crystalline (LC) gels, which exhibit flexible morphological plasticity and mechanical programmability is demonstrated. Supramolecular interactions in the smectic biogels play an important role for their high plasticity. Remarkably, the samples exhibit outstanding mechanical behaviors. The tensile strength and Young's modulus at MPa levels are comparable or even higher than chemically cross‐linked hydrogels and LC elastomers. More importantly, mechanical programmability of the LC gels is achieved by genetically tuning the charge density of protein backbones. Consequently, the mechanical performance is manipulated in the range of one order of magnitude. Thus, this type of anhydrous protein LC gels offers great opportunities for load‐bearing high‐tech applications.