© D.A. Ivanov and S.S. Sheiko Top – left: molecular structure of a plastomer synthesized in this work; right: supramolecular structure formed by the assembly of identical plastomers.
Bottom – left: stress-strain curves for plastomers (“M300-2” and “M300-3”) that mimic the mechanical behavior of pig skin samples (“porcine”, in transversal or longitudinal cross-section); right: image showing the iridescent color of the plastomers. The edges are less blue because they receive the light at a different angle.
Biological tissues have complex mechanical properties – soft-yet-strong, tough-yet-flexible – that are difficult to reproduce using synthetic materials. An international team has managed to produce a biocompatible synthetic material that replicates tissue mechanics and alters color when it changes shape, like chameleon skin. These results, to which researchers from CNRS, Université de Haute-Alsace
1 and ESRF, the European Synchrotron, have contributed with colleagues in the US (University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, University of Akron), are published on March 30, 2018 in Science . They promise new materials for biomedical devices. To produce a medical implant, we need to select materials with similar mechanical properties to those in biological tissues, so as to mitigate inflammation or necrosis. A number of tissues including the skin, the intestinal wall, and the heart muscle, have the particularity of being soft yet stiffening when they are stretched. Until now, it has been impossible to reproduce this behavior with synthetic materials.
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