Self-assembly driven regulation of 3D brush-/flower-like silk nanostructures with robust structural effects on composites construction

Abstract

Natural designs provide abundant inspirations for constructing structure regulated, performance enhanced and function enriched materials. An impressive 3D brush-like silk nanostructure (SNB) was designed and regulated via template-guided self-assembly approach in our previous work. While fundamental issues on template-guided self-assembly process to construct SNBs and followed by regulating flower-like silk nanostructure (SNF) mineralization have not been studied in detail yet. Robust structural effects and additional functionalities on composites construction remain hazy. Herein, current works concentrate on issues related to assembly dynamics, structural features, characteristic parameters and assembly simulation during template-guided self-assembly process. Morphologies change, transmittance, pH value, zeta-potential, ThT-induced fluorescence emission and MD simulation are measured to monitor SNBs formation, proving it's a nucleus reliance and conformation transition process. Structural superiorities of SNBs and SNFs are proved by constructing composited materials (such as membranes, hydrogels or aerogels) with cellulose or chitin derivatives, and enhanced mechanical performance, excellent viscoelastic behavior or highly porous network can be found therewith. In addition, additional functionalities such as Ag nanoparticle reducing property and anti-bacteria application are evaluated as well. This work is expected to provide guidelines and inspirations for tailoring versatile structures in controlled manners and exploiting functional features to expand silk utilization scopes.