Bioinspired Macroscopic Ribbon Fibers with a Nacre-Mimetic Architecture Based on Highly Ordered Alignment of Ultralong Hydroxyapatite Nanowires

Abstract

A variety of biological materials in natural organisms supply a rich source of structural design guidelines and inspirations for the construction of advanced structural materials with excellent mechanical properties. In this work, inspired by the natural nacre and human bone, a kind of flexible macroscopic ribbon fiber made from highly ordered alignment of ultralong hydroxyapatite (HAP) nanowires and sodium polyacrylate (PAAS) with a “brick-and-mortar” layered structure has been developed by a scalable and convenient wet-spinning method. The quasi-long-range orderly liquid crystal of one-dimensional ultralong hydroxyapatite nanowires is employed and spun into the continuous flexible macroscopic ribbon fiber. In this work, highly ordered ultralong HAP nanowires act as the hard “brick” and PAAS acts as the soft “mortar”, and the nacre-mimetic layered architecture is obtained. The as-prepared flexible macroscopic HAP/PAAS ribbon fiber exhibits superior mechanical properties, and the maximum tensile strength and Young’s modulus are as high as 203.58 ± 45.38 MPa and 24.56 ± 5.35 GPa, respectively. In addition, benefiting from the excellent flexibility and good knittability, the as-prepared macroscopic HAP/PAAS ribbon fiber can be woven into various flexible macroscopic architectures. Additionally, the as-prepared flexible macroscopic HAP/PAAS ribbon fiber can be further functionalized by incorporation of various functional components, such as magnetic and photoluminescent constituents. The as-prepared flexible macroscopic HAP/PAAS ribbon fiber has potential applications in various fields such as smart wearable devices, optical devices, magnetic devices, and biomedical engineering.

Nanowires: Synthesis and Energy/Environmental Applications

“…A new kind of flexible high-strength nanostructured rope was prepared by highly ordered alignment of ultralong HAP NWs and sodium polyacrylate with a "brick-and-mortar" layered structure, which showed superior mechanical properties, and the maximum tensile strength and Young's modulus were 203.58 AE 45.38 MPa and 24.56 AE 5.35 GPa, respectively. [38] The as-prepared high-strength fire-resistant nanostructured rope has promising applications in various fields such as flexible fireproof textiles and smart wearable devices.…”

“…A flexible macroscopic ribbon fiber made from highly ordered alignment of ultralong HAP NWs and sodium polyacrylate with a "brick-and-mortar" layered structure exhibited superior mechanical properties (tensile strength 203.58 MPa, Young's modulus 24.56 GPa). [38] Ultralong HAP NWs were also hybridized with sodium alginate to prepare hydrogels with enhanced mechanical properties. [50]…”

“…Owing to these unique properties, HAP NWs have attracted considerable attention for applications in various fields such as biomedical, energy and environment, and many exciting results were reported since then. [25][26][27][28][29][30][31][32][33][34][35][36][37][38][39] Considering the increasing research interest and growing number of publications, it is desirable to provide a timely and systematic overview of recent advances in the studies on HAP NWs and their energy and environmental applications.In this review, we first provide a brief introduction to the synthesis of HAP NWs (Figure 1). Then the energy-related applications of HAP NWs, including the battery, solar energy-assisted water evaporation, light-driven self-propelled device, and thermal insulation are summarized.…”

“…Owing to these unique properties, HAP NWs have attracted considerable attention for applications in various fields such as biomedical, energy and environment, and many exciting results were reported since then. [25][26][27][28][29][30][31][32][33][34][35][36][37][38][39] Considering the increasing research interest and growing number of publications, it is desirable to provide a timely and systematic overview of recent advances in the studies on HAP NWs and their energy and environmental applications.…”

Bioinspired flexible, high-strength, and versatile hydrogel with the fiberboard-and-mortar hierarchically ordered structure

“…In recent years, the authors' research group developed a simple injection strategy by injecting the ultralong HAP nanowire slurry into ethanol, which could realize the construction of large-scale hierarchically ordered structure based on ultralong HAP nanowires [21,30,31]. In this method, the ultralong HAP nanowire slurry synthesized by the calcium oleate precursor solvothermal method is injected into absolute ethanol using a syringe, and the large-scale hierarchically ordered structure consisting of highly ordered ultralong HAP nanowires can be obtained in a short period of time (several minutes).…”