Under eons of evolutionary and environmental pressure, biological systems have evolved many strong and lightweight polymeric materials with advanced properties. These materials often outperform their man-made counterparts in terms of multi-functionality/tenability as well as adaptability/stimuli-responsiveness. Modularity is ubiquitous in natural protein-based structural materials. This modularity aids the �controlled complexity� of bottom-up construction and hierarchical self-organization across multiple length-scales, ultimately yielding the required advanced mechanical properties, so-called �collective emergent properties�, which dramatically exceed the summed mechanical properties of their individual constituents. The modular design also provides an elegant strategy to combine sequence specificity and synthetic efficiency: while the modules contain precise structural information and programmed properties, polymerization of the modules quickly generates high polymers in an efficient manner. Inspired by Nature, my laboratory has designed and synthesized a series of man-made modular polymers. In this talk, I will discuss three families of modular polymers developed in our lab that are inspired by muscle protein titin, elastic and silk, respectively. Importantly, those synthetic modular polymers not only closely mimics the modularity of their biological counterparts, but also manifests an exciting combination of mechanical properties, including high strength, toughness, adaptive and dynamic properties such as self-healing and shape-memory properties.

Modular polymer design: A strategy to combine sequence specificity and synthetic efficiency for advanced polymeric materials

246th National Meeting (2013)

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