Journal
ADVANCED MATERIALS
Volume 32, Issue 10, Pages -Publisher
WILEY-V C H VERLAG GMBH
DOI: 10.1002/adma.201907697
Keywords
engineered proteins; liquid crystalline gels; mechanical programmability; plasticity
Categories
Funding
- Scientific Instrument Developing Project of the Chinese Academy of Sciences [ZDKYYQ20180001]
- National Natural Science Foundation of China [21704099, 21877104, 21834007, 21801235, 21907088]
- National Key R&D Program of China [2018YFA0902600]
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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.
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