Super Flexible Biomimetic Membrane Material Can Be Used In Smart Fabrics.

Soft elastic material has good flexibility, large deformation and high energy conversion efficiency, and it has huge application demand in the field of intelligent fabrics. However, the preparation of flexible elastomeric materials with long life, low cost and good biocompatibility is still a challenging task.

Spider silk is natural in nature. fibre The representatives with excellent properties can exhibit super high stretchability. Even some species of spider silk can stretch a hundred times without breaking. In fact, it is inextricably linked to the "pre stored" fibers in the sticky droplets of spider silk.

In addition, animal cells also have superior flexibility, which are achieved by membrane folding and microvilli structure, such as macrophages can expand their surface area by 5 times to swallow large microorganisms or cell fragments, which in fact is also folded with cells. Micropile The "form" membrane is directly related to the wool form.

These high elastic systems in nature provide important inspiration for scientists to design high-performance tensile materials. Researchers from the Arnaud Antkowiak of the French National Academy of Sciences (CNRS) simulated the cellular wrinkle and villi strain buffer structure. The polyvinylidene fluoride -CO- six fluoropropene (PVDF-HFP) was used as material, and a super flexible material with reversible deformation was driven by wetting liquid in the nanofiber membrane.

Film folded structure after dyeing

The research team first used electrospinning technology to prepare PVDF-HFP nonwovens film. The maximum resistance deformation of the nanofiber membrane was only 30% after further treatment. To simulate the stretching effect of surface tension on the skin actin layer, the researchers further perfused the wetting liquid (silicone oil) into the fibrous membrane, and the capillary force generated by storing the extra membrane components in the folds and grooves constituted the choroid network, thus endowing the PVDF-HFP membrane material with super high stretchability.

Tensile properties of membrane materials

The PVDF-HFP films were further prepared into planar, columnar and spherical materials. The test results showed that the different kinds of membrane materials showed similar wrinkle behavior under the action of liquid capillary action, but there were subtle mechanical behaviors and deformation scale differences. The spherical membrane material showed good stability in the 10 times volume expansion / contraction cycle test of up to 100 thousand times.

　　 Construction and force analysis of flexible membrane materials with different shapes

The theoretical research results will help people understand soft elasticity from the perspective of microstructural deformation. Material Science The stress buckling behavior provides a reference strategy for the design and construction of super flexible materials, and has important guiding significance for the development of the new generation of flexible intelligent textiles.