Mussels helped create a super-strong polymer. Free Technical Library News

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Mussels helped create a super-strong polymer

09.11.2017

Scientists from the University of California at Santa Barbara (USA), led by Megan Valentine (Megan Valentine), "inspired" by the example of mussels, have created a new heavy-duty material.

Sea mussels are extremely securely attached to pitfalls: no storm can break them from their place. The secret of such tenacity is in the special polymer material they produce, the internal structure of which is held together by covalent bonds between atoms and ionic bonds between molecules. The resulting substance is both elastic and tear-resistant.

Scientists have been working on the creation of similar artificial materials for some time. The most promising method is to attach special negatively charged chemical groups, catechols, to strands of gel-like polymers that already have covalent bonds within them. The polymer is then saturated with positively charged iron (Fe) ions, which form bonds with several neighboring catechols, "crosslinking" the polymer strands together.

This method has so far had one significant drawback: the synthesis of such polymers took place in an aqueous medium; accordingly, the material was obtained from the very beginning swollen with water and was little capable of further stretching without ruptures. Valentine and colleagues decided to correct this shortcoming by using a dry gel polymer polyethylene glycol (PEG) as a basis.

After synthesizing PEG, they attached catechol groups to its threads, closing each of them with another chemical group - a "cap" so that the catechols did not react with atmospheric oxygen. Right before "crosslinking" the PEG strands with iron ions, the scientists removed the "caps" by treating the material with acid.

The resulting material, as tests have shown, is 100-1000 times stronger than ordinary polyethylene glycol, and at the same time it is able to stretch several times, absorbing significant energy. In the future, the authors write, it may also be possible to “teach” him to repair small damages on his own.

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