Published December 14, 2023 | Version v1
Journal article Open

Bioinspired mechanical mineralization of organogels

Description

Mineralization is a long-lasting method commonly used by biological materials to selectively strengthen in response to site specific mechanical stress. Achieving a similar form of toughening in synthetic polymer composites remains challenging. In previous work, we developed methods to promote chemical reactions via the piezoelectrochemical effect with mechanical responses of inorganic, ZnO nanoparticles. Herein, we report a distinct example of a mechanically-mediated reaction in which the spherical ZnO nanoparticles react themselves leading to the formation of microrods composed of a Zn/S mineral inside an organogel. The microrods can be used to selectively create mineral deposits within the material resulting in the strengthening of the overall resulting composite.

Data availability

The synthesis, characterization, and experimental data for this paper are all provided in the Supplementary Information. All other data is available from the corresponding author upon request.

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Additional details

Identifiers

DOI
10.1038/s41467-023-43733-x
Other
oai:uchicago.tind.io:10162

Funding

U.S. Air Force Office of Scientific Research (AFOSR)
COE 5‐29168
National Science Foundation
CHE‐1710116
U.S. Army Research Office (ARO)
W911NF‐17‐1‐0598 (71524‐CH)
National Science Foundation
DMR-2011854

UChicago Information

Division(s)
Physical Sciences Division, Pritzker School of Molecular Engineering
Department(s)
Chemistry, Physics
Center(s) or Institute(s)
James Franck Institute