Abstract
Rigid biological systems are increasingly becoming a source of inspiration for the fabrication of the advanced functional materials due to their diverse hierarchical structures and remarkable engineering properties. As a bionic biomaterial with a clear layered structure, excellent mechanical properties, and interesting rainbow colors, nacre has become one of the most attractive models for novel artificial materials design. In this research paper, the tough and strong nacre-like bio-hybrid membranes with an interpenetrating petals structure were fabricated from chitosan (CS) and magadiite (MAG) clay nanosheets through the gel-casting self-assembling method. The analyses from X-ray diffraction (XRD), scanning electron microscope (SEM), and observations of water droplets on membranes indicated that the nacre-like hybrid membranes had a layered compact structure. Fourier transforms infrared spectroscopy (FTIR) analyses suggested that the CS molecular chains formed chemical bonds and hydrogen bonds with MAG layers. The inter-penetrating petal layered structure had a good effect on the mechanical properties of a nacre-like bio-hybrid membranes and the tensile strength of the hybrid membranes could reach at 78.6 MPa. However, the transmission analyses of the results showed that the hybrid membranes still had a certain visible light transmittance. Finally, the hybrid membranes possessed an intriguing efficient fire-shielding property during exposure to the flame of alcohol burner. Consequently, the great biocompatibility and excellent mechanical properties of the bio-hybrid membranes with the special interpenetrating petals structure provides a great opportunity for these composites to be widely applied in biomaterial research.
Highlights
Scientists often get inspiration from natural biology to make new materials
The small angle and wide-angle X-ray diffraction (XRD, D8 ADVANCE, Bruker AXS, Karlsruhe, Germany) studies were performed to assess the presence of crystallites, and the internal structure of the nacre-like membranes was characterized using a scanning electron microscope (SEM, Nova Nano SEM 430, FEI, Hillsboro, OR, USA, where the operating voltage selection was set to 10 kV)
H bonds located at 3455 cm belonged to the CS blue shifted to 3511 cm in the CS/MAG hybrid membranes and and the membranes the width width and and intensity intensity of of this this absorption absorption peak peak was was increased
Summary
Scientists often get inspiration from natural biology to make new materials. Natural nacre, consisting of 95 wt % aragonite and 5 wt % biological macromolecules, possesses remarkable mechanical performance [1]. Researched the hierarchical structure of nacre-like materials and summarized various enhancement mechanisms to design interfacial interactions between different brick-and-mortar materials Following this method, they successfully overcame the problems of poor dispersion and weak interfacial interactions in the performance of polymer nanocomposites based on different reinforcement fillers. This research’s novel findings can be highlighted as: (i) the tough and strong nacre-like bio-hybrid CS/MAG membranes with interpenetrating petals structure were fabricated through the gel-casting self-assembling method; (ii) in order to increase the interfacial interactions between MAG nanosheets and CS chains, the γ-aminopropyltriethoxysilane (KH550) was added to the process of fabricating the bio-hybrid CS/MAG membranes for comparison, and based on the contact angle data, the addition of KH550 increased the hydrophobic properties of the membrane; (iii) the mechanical behavior of the nacre-like hybrid membranes was effectively improved, especially tensile strength;. It was interesting to further explore some of the other outstanding properties, which have not yet been investigated deeply in other research
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