Due to the rigid-rod characteristics of carbon nanotubes (CNT) they have been shown to aide and induce atomic and nano-scale ordering of polymer materials. In this work, this CNT trait is exploited to understand its potential along with other rigid nano-carbons to promote ordered assembly of biological materials. For the synthetic formation of collagen materials, highly aligned collagen fibrils are necessary in order to replicate the native collagen structure. In this work collagen fibers were self-assembled in the presence of both single-wall carbon nanotubes (SWNT) and carbon nano-chips (CNC) using a gel-spinning approach. The morphology and dispersion quality of the nano-carbons was found to play a significant role in the overall collagen fibril alignment. X-ray scattering and microscopy analysis shows that low concentrations (i.e., 0.5 wt% loading) of well-dispersed SWNT promote collagen molecular and fibrillar alignment, as well as D-banding formation consistent with native collagen. Beyond ordering, the nano-carbons used were also able to reinforce the collagen composite fibers, which showed a considerable increase in both strength and elastic modulus (100% and 122%, respectively) as compared to control fibers. During post-processing or elongation of the fibers, the nano-carbons were capable of inducing higher levels of fibril alignment and packing as compared to control fibers. This work is the first to show direct evidence that nano-carbon fillers may promote collagen molecular and fibril alignment during both the self-assembly process as well as during the application of stress.

Influence of nanocarbons on collagen molecular ordering and fibril alignment

249th National Meeting (2015)

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