Shanghai Silicate Institute has developed large-size high-performance ordered structure bionic materials

Although natural biomaterials are composed of common materials such as calcium carbonate and calcium phosphate, they often have complex assembly superstructures and outstanding properties that meet their environmental and functional needs, providing inspiration and guidance for material structure design and performance optimization. For example, a shell is a "brick cement layered ordered structure" formed by assembling calcium carbonate and a small amount of chitin composite , and the skeleton is an ordered structure formed by assembling hydroxyapatite nanocrystals/collagen fibers. Nanomaterials have attracted great interest and attention due to their unique physical and chemical properties. However, macroblock materials formed by random cluttering of nanostructure units are often difficult to optimize performance. Although the imitation of natural biomaterials has proven to be an ideal strategy for building high performance materials, how to achieve accurate and orderly self-assembly of nanostructure units remains a significant challenge.

Recently, the research team led by Zhu Yingjie, a researcher at the Shanghai Institute of Ceramics of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, prepared hydroxyapatite based on the research work of self-assembly of highly unidirectional hydroxyapatite ultra-long nanowires to rapidly prepare highly ordered flexible biomaterials. Ultra-long nanowire/sodium polyacrylate quasi-liquid crystal slurry, and then injected into the ethanol by a simple syringe injection method, successfully developed an ordered array structure of hydroxyapatite ultra-long nanowires and “brick cement” High-performance bionic flexible composite fiber with layered ordered structure. The bionic composite fiber having both a "brick cement layered ordered structure" and a highly ordered array of hydroxyapatite ultra-long nanowires has good flexibility and can be knotted, bent or twisted without damaging it. Structural integrity. More importantly, the good structural design makes the bionic ordered flexible composite fiber have excellent mechanical properties, and its tensile strength and Young's modulus reach 203.58 MPa and 24.56 GPa, respectively, which is superior to natural dense bone and literature. Hydroxyapatite composite reported. In addition, the research team has also developed an ordered structural flexible composite fiber with magnetic responsiveness or fluorescence function by introducing magnetic nanoparticles or fluorescent dyes. The prepared hydroxyapatite ultra-long nanowire-based ordered structure composite fiber is expected to be used as a raw material to construct various high-performance flexible biomimetic materials, and has good application prospects in many fields. The relevant research results were published in the international journal "American Chemical Society - Nano".

In addition, inspired by natural enamel, the research team also developed a bottom-up multi-scale self-assembly strategy to develop a new resin-reinforced hydroxyapatite ultra-long nanowire-based imitation enamel highly ordered structural material. The method can realize multi-scale (from nanometer to micron to macroscopic scale) self-assembly, and prepare large-sized (centimeter-scale) and arbitrary shape highly ordered biomimetic materials with excellent mechanical properties, and has biomedical fields such as bone defect repair. Good application prospects. The relevant research results were published in the international academic journal Chemical Engineering Journal.

Relevant research work has been funded by the National Natural Science Foundation of China and the Shanghai Municipal Science and Technology Commission.

High-performance biomimetic flexible composite fiber with both hydroxyapatite ultra-long nanowire ordered array structure and "brick cement layered structure".

The hydroxyapatite ultra-long nanowire ordered structure bionic flexible composite fiber has excellent mechanical properties.

Functionalized hydroxyapatite ultra-long nanowire ordered structure bionic flexible composite fibers and fabrics, colors, specific shapes and texts constructed.

A large-scale (greater than 6 cm) resin-reinforced hydroxyapatite ultra-long nanowire-based imitation enamel highly ordered structural material was prepared from a bottom-up multi-scale self-assembly method.