Liquid metal-tailored gluten network for protein-based e-skin.

ABSTRACT: Designing electronic skin (e-skin) with proteins is a critical way to endow e-skin with biocompatibility, but engineering protein structures to achieve controllable mechanical properties and self-healing ability remains a challenge. Here, we develop a hybrid gluten network through the incorporation of a eutectic gallium indium alloy (EGaIn) to design a self-healable e-skin with improved mechanical properties. The intrinsic reversible disulfide bond/sulfhydryl group reconfiguration of gluten networks is explored as a driving force to introduce EGaIn as a chemical cross-linker, thus inducing secondary structure rearrangement of gluten to form additional β-sheets as physical cross-linkers. Remarkably, the obtained gluten-based material is self-healing, achieves synthetic material-like stretch

SUBMITTER: Chen B 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC8904466 | biostudies-literature | 2022 Mar

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature