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Spider Silk Supercontraction-Inspired Cotton-Hydrogel Self-Adapting Textiles

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Abstract

Smart textiles are able to self-adapt to an irregular surface. So, they found new applications in intelligent clothes and equipments, where the properties and functionality of traditional polymeric fibers are insufficient, and hard to be realized. Inspired by the supercontraction behavior of the spider silk, we prepared a spinnable hydrogel to form a sheath-core-like composite yarn, after being coated on cotton yarn. The strong hydrogen bonding between the cotton yarn and the polar groups of the hydrogel provides an outstanding mechanical stability, and the twists insertion forms a spiral-like architecture, which exhibited moisture-responsive super contraction behavior. By structural tailoring the chirality of the fiber twists and coiling extends into homo-chiral and heterochiral architectures, as displays contraction and expansion when is exposed to the moisture. Once the relative humidity is increased from 60 to 90%, a homochiral yarn exhibits 90% contraction, while a heterochiral yarn shows 450% expansion, and the maximum work capacity reached up to 6.1 J/Kg. The super contracted yarn can be re-stretched to its original length manifesting cyclability, which can be exploited to build a smart textile, self-adaptive to irregular surfaces. Such a strategy may be further extended to a wide variety of materials to achieve intelligent textiles from common fiber or yarns.

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Acknowledgements

This work was supported by the National Key Research and Development Program of China (Grant # 2019YFE0119600), the National Natural Science Foundation of China (Grants 51973093, U1533122, and 51773094), “Frontiers Science Center for New Organic Matter”, Nankai University, Tianjin, China (Grant # 63181206), the Science Foundation for Distinguished Young Scholars of Tianjin (Grant # 18JCJQJC46600), the Xingliao Talent Plan (XLYC1802042), Key Laboratory of Display Materials and Photoelectric Devices, Ministry of Education (LX20200420001), the Fundamental Research Funds for the Central Universities (Grant # 63171219), and National Special Support Plan for High-level Talents people (C041800902).

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Author notes

  1. Abdul Qadeer Khan and Kaiqing Yu contributed equally to this work.

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Science, China Pharmaceutical University, Nanjing, 211198, China

    Abdul Qadeer Khan, Meilin Wang, Lili Bao & Xiang Zhou

  2. State Key Laboratory of Medicinal Chemical Biology, College of Pharmacy, and College of Chemistry, Key Laboratory of Functional Polymer Materials, Frontiers Science Center for New Organic Matter, Nankai University, Tianjin, 300071, China

    Abdul Qadeer Khan, Kaiqing Yu, Jiatian Li, Xueqi Leng, Meilin Wang, Xuesong Zhang, Zunfeng Liu & Xiang Zhou

  3. School of Chemical Engineering, University of Science and Technology Liaoning, Anshan, 114051, China

    Xuesong Zhang & Baigang An

  4. Institute of Textiles and Clothing, The Hong Kong Polytechnic University, Hong Kong, 999077, China

    Bin Fei

  5. Department of Cardiothoracic Surgery, Jinling Hospital, Nanjing, 210002, China

    Wei Wei & Huichuan Zhuang

  6. State Key Laboratory for Modification of Chemical Fibers and Polymer Materials, Shanghai Engineering Research Center of Nano-Biomaterials and Regenerative Medicine, College of Chemistry, Chemical Engineering and Biotechnology, Donghua University, Shanghai, 201620, PR China

    Muhammad Shafiq

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  1. Abdul Qadeer Khan
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Correspondence to Lili Bao, Zunfeng Liu or Xiang Zhou.

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Khan, A.Q., Yu, K., Li, J. et al. Spider Silk Supercontraction-Inspired Cotton-Hydrogel Self-Adapting Textiles. Adv. Fiber Mater. 4, 1572–1583 (2022). https://doi.org/10.1007/s42765-022-00185-0

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s42765-022-00185-0

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