For many years polymer researchers have sought to recreate naturally occurring biopolymers, like spider silk, that are both strong and biodegradable. While progress has been made in creating synthetic versions of these materials, researchers have struggled to replicate the processes bugs use to assemble and spin biopolymers into strong fibers and materials.
A recent study from the department of materials science and engineering at Carnegie Mellon uses advanced molecular simulations to explore why silks are so difficult to process into materials. The study by Ph.D. candidate Songyue Liu and assistant professor Thomas O’Connor shows that associative biopolymers display new physical behaviors during deformation that are not present in synthetic polymers or captured by current models of polymer processing.
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