Abstract
Self-organization processes are a major focus of current scientific interest worldwide. Novel materials research and development increasingly seeks to exploit ways in which matter self-organizes. Here, self-organization kinetics have been measured for electrospun fiber annealing. A key feature of such materials is a large surface-to-volume ratio. Fibers were spun from aqueous solutions of poly(l-ornithine) Br− (PLO) or co-poly(l-glutamic acid4, l-tyrosine1) Na+ (PLEY), model synthetic polypeptides. After crosslinking in situ, fibers were annealed in water at 22°C. Analysis by infrared (IR) spectroscopy has revealed that annealing involved polymer restructuring within fibers on a time scale of 29min for PLO and 63min for PLEY. The largest changes in the distribution of polymer conformations occurred in the first 13min of annealing. There was a substantial decrease in the amount of Na+ bound to PLEY fibers during annealing, according to energy-dispersive X-ray spectroscopy (EDX) analysis. Two parallel pathways provided a better account of the annealing trajectory than a single pathway with multiple transition states. This study advances current understanding of polypeptide-based materials and suggests approaches for applications development.
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