In situ mechanical reinforcement of polymer hydrogels via metal-coordinated crosslink mineralization
Author(s)
Kim, Sungjin; Regitsky, Abigail U.; Song, Jake; Ilavsky, Jan; McKinley, Gareth H.; Holten-Andersen, Niels; ... Show more Show less
DownloadPublished version (1.676Mb)
Publisher with Creative Commons License
Publisher with Creative Commons License
Creative Commons Attribution
Terms of use
Metadata
Show full item recordAbstract
© 2021, The Author(s). Biological organic-inorganic materials remain a popular source of inspiration for bioinspired materials design and engineering. Inspired by the self-assembling metal-reinforced mussel holdfast threads, we tested if metal-coordinate polymer networks can be utilized as simple composite scaffolds for direct in situ crosslink mineralization. Starting with aqueous solutions of polymers end-functionalized with metal-coordinating ligands of catechol or histidine, here we show that inter-molecular metal-ion coordination complexes can serve as mineral nucleation sites, whereby significant mechanical reinforcement is achieved upon nanoscale particle growth directly at the metal-coordinate network crosslink sites.
Date issued
2021-01Department
Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Department of Materials Science and Engineering; Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Department of Mechanical EngineeringJournal
Nature Communications
Publisher
Springer Science and Business Media LLC
Citation
Kim, Sungjin, Regitsky, Abigail U, Song, Jake, Ilavsky, Jan, McKinley, Gareth H et al. 2021. "In situ mechanical reinforcement of polymer hydrogels via metal-coordinated crosslink mineralization." Nature Communications, 12 (1).
Version: Final published version
ISSN
2041-1723