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Spider silk morphology for responsive materials

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  11 March 2013

Juan Guan ,
David Porter  and
Fritz Vollrath
Juan Guan
Affiliation:
Department of Zoology, South Parks Road, University of Oxford, Oxford, OX1 3PS, UK
David Porter*
Affiliation:
Department of Zoology, South Parks Road, University of Oxford, Oxford, OX1 3PS, UK
Fritz Vollrath
Affiliation:
Department of Zoology, South Parks Road, University of Oxford, Oxford, OX1 3PS, UK
*
*Correspondence: david.porter@zoo.ox.ac.uk
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Abstract

This study reveals that an “old” mechanism for shape memory in oriented polymers is in fact just one separate contribution for “supercontraction” in Nephila spider major ampulate silks. When Nephila spider silks are in contact with liquid water, they “super”-contract up to 28% of the original stretched length. However, we discovered that under glass transition conditions these silks only relax with a maximum shrinkage of 13%, and this phenomenon is defined as Tg-contraction. Structural components permanent order (PO), permanent disorder (PD), meta order (MO) and meta disorder (MD) were proposed from the primary amino-acid sequence of the silk protein to explain morphological changes in the two contraction phenomena: MD contributes 13% of the full supercontraction and contributes to Tg-contraction; whereas MO (the proline-containing motifs) contributes the rest for the full super-contraction and does not contribute to Tg-contraction. The morphology in Nephila spider silk structure suggests two separate mechanisms to generate the shape memory effect in synthetic polymers.

Keywords

biologicalmorphologystructural
Type
Articles
Information
MRS Online Proceedings Library (OPL) , Volume 1498: Symposium Q – Biomimetic, Bio-inspired and Self-Assembled Materials for Engineered Surfaces and Applications , 2013 , pp. 197 - 202
Copyright
Copyright © Materials Research Society 2013 

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References

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