TY - JOUR
T1 - Spiral honeycomb microstructured bacterial cellulose for increased strength and toughness
AU - Yu, Kui
AU - Balasubramanian, Srikkanth
AU - Pahlavani, Helda
AU - Mirzaali, Mohammad J.
AU - Zadpoor, Amir A.
AU - Aubin-Tam, Marie Eve
PY - 2020
Y1 - 2020
N2 - Natural materials, such as nacre and silk, exhibit both high strength and toughness due to their hierarchical structures highly organized at the nano-, micro-, and macroscales. Bacterial cellulose (BC) presents a hierarchical fibril structure at the nanoscale. At the microscale, however, BC nanofibers are distributed randomly. Here, BC self-Assembles into a highly organized spiral honeycomb microstructure giving rise to a high tensile strength (315 MPa) and a high toughness value (17.8 MJ m-3), with pull-out and de-spiral morphologies observed during failure. Both experiments and finite-element simulations indicate improved mechanical properties resulting from the honeycomb structure. The mild fabrication process consists of an in situ fermentation step utilizing poly(vinyl alcohol), followed by a post-Treatment including freezing-Thawing and boiling. This simple self-Assembly production process is highly scalable, does not require any toxic chemicals, and enables the fabrication of light, strong, and tough hierarchical composite materials with tunable shape and size.
AB - Natural materials, such as nacre and silk, exhibit both high strength and toughness due to their hierarchical structures highly organized at the nano-, micro-, and macroscales. Bacterial cellulose (BC) presents a hierarchical fibril structure at the nanoscale. At the microscale, however, BC nanofibers are distributed randomly. Here, BC self-Assembles into a highly organized spiral honeycomb microstructure giving rise to a high tensile strength (315 MPa) and a high toughness value (17.8 MJ m-3), with pull-out and de-spiral morphologies observed during failure. Both experiments and finite-element simulations indicate improved mechanical properties resulting from the honeycomb structure. The mild fabrication process consists of an in situ fermentation step utilizing poly(vinyl alcohol), followed by a post-Treatment including freezing-Thawing and boiling. This simple self-Assembly production process is highly scalable, does not require any toxic chemicals, and enables the fabrication of light, strong, and tough hierarchical composite materials with tunable shape and size.
KW - bio-inspired materials
KW - biocomposites
KW - cellular materials
KW - self-Assembly
KW - sustainability
UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=85096015757&partnerID=8YFLogxK
U2 - 10.1021/acsami.0c15886
DO - 10.1021/acsami.0c15886
M3 - Article
C2 - 33112612
AN - SCOPUS:85096015757
SN - 1944-8244
VL - 12
SP - 50748
EP - 50755
JO - ACS Applied Materials and Interfaces
JF - ACS Applied Materials and Interfaces
IS - 45
ER -