Related papers: Natural Spider Silk Nanofibrils Produced by Assemb…
Electrospun poly(\epsilon-caprolactone) (PCL)nanofibrous mats are widely considered for blood-contacting wound dressings and small-diameter vascular applications; however, their intrinsic hydrophobicity limits rapid wetting and controlled…
Spider dragline silk shows well-known outstanding mechanical properties. However, its sigmoidal shape of the measured stress-strain curves (i.e. the yield) can not be described by classical polymer theories and recent hierarchical chain…
We present a tentative interpretation of the origin of nematic liquid crystalline order exhibited by dragline silk fibroin solutions collected from the spider Nephila clavipes. Liquid crystallinity is thought to confer certain rheological…
Nanoparticles tethered with DNA strands are promising building blocks for bottom-up nanotechnology, and a theoretical understanding is important for future development. Here we build on approaches developed in polymer physics to provide…
Advanced modern technology and industrial sustainability theme have contributed implementing composite materials for various industrial applications. Green composites are among the desired alternatives for the green products. However, to…
We describe several unexpected phenomena, caused by a solid-solid phase transition (gel-to-crystal) typical for all main classes of lipid substances - phospholipids, triglycerides, diglycerides, alkanes, etc. We discovered that this…
We experimentally determine tensile force-elongation diagrams of tapered optical fibers with a nanofiber waist. The tapered optical fibers are produced from standard silica optical fibers using a heat and pull process. Both, the…
We investigate by scattering techniques the structure of water-based soft composite materials comprising a crystal made of Pluronic block-copolymer micelles arranged in a face-centered cubic lattice and a small amount (at most 2% by volume)…
Throughout our history, we, humans, have sought to better control and understand our environment. To this end, we have extended our natural senses with a host of sensors-tools that enable us to detect both the very large, such as the…
Incorporating cells within active biomaterial scaffolds is a promising strategy to develop forefront materials that can autonomously sense, respond, and alter the scaffold in response to environmental cues or internal cell circuitry. Using…
Soft slender structures are ubiquitous in natural and artificial systems and can be observed at scales that range from the nanometric to the kilometric, from polymers to space tethers. We present a practical numerical approach to simulate…
Silicene, a new two-dimensional (2D) material has attracted intense research because of the ubiquitous use of silicon in modern technology. However, producing free-standing silicene has proved to be a huge challenge. Until now, silicene…
Silicon nanoparticles are widely used in the medical area and until now they have not manifested toxicological effects in humans beings. In order to understand the physical properties that determine their low-toxicity, we perform ab initio…
Recently, there has been a surge of interest in sustainable energy sources, particularly for wearable computing. Triboelectric nanogenerators (TENGs) have shown promise in converting human motion into electric power. Textile-based TENGs,…
The self-assembly of photonic nanostructures in insects involves chitin, proteins, and lipids. While synthetic photonic systems have been extensively studied, current lipid-based self-assembly systems are limited in periodicity to…
A novel, highly flexible, conductive polymer-based fiber with high electric capacitance is reported. In its crossection the fiber features a periodic sequence of hundreds of conductive and isolating plastic layers positioned around metallic…
In this paper we review the theory of silicon nanowires. We focus on nanowires with diameters below 10 nm, where quantum effects become important and the properties diverge significantly from those of bulk silicon. These wires can be…
We report in-situ synthesis of iron oxide particles inside silicon nitride nanopores via a chemical reaction, monitored by current readout. Nanopores were formed by electroporation on glass chips (diameters from 1.7 to 11.3 nm),…
Periodic assemblies of nanoparticles are central to surface patterning, with applications in biosensing, energy conversion, and nanofabrication. Evaporation of colloidal droplets on substrates provides a simple yet effective route to…
Nanofibers are an interesting phase into which amphiphilic molecules can self-assemble. Described for a large number of synthetic lipids, they were seldom reported for natural lipids like microbial amphiphiles, known as biosurfactants. In…