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Title: Thermoresponsive Stiffening with Microgel Particles in a Semiflexible Fibrin Network

Journal Article · · Macromolecules

We report here temperature-responsive soft composites of semiflexible biopolymer networks (fibrin) containing dispersed microgel colloidal particles of poly(N-isopropylacrylamide) (pNIPAM) that undergo a thermodynamically driven deswelling transition above the lower critical solution temperature. Unlike standard polymer particle composites, decreasing the inclusion volume of the particles (by increasing temperature) is concomitant with a striking increase of the overall elastic stiffness of the composite. We observe such a behavior over a wide composition space. The composite elastic shear modulus reversibly stiffens by up to 10-fold over a small change in temperature from 25 to 35 °C. In isolation, the fibrin network and microgel suspension both soften with increased temperature, making the stiffening of the composites particularly significant. We hypothesize that stiffening is caused by the shrinking microgel particles that deform fibrin filaments, and modify the network structure. We further develop a phenomenological model that quantifies this hypothesis, and the derived predictions are qualitatively consistent with our experimental data.

Research Organization:
Univ. of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, IL (United States)
Sponsoring Organization:
USDOE Office of Science (SC), Basic Energy Sciences (BES)
Grant/Contract Number:
FG02-07ER46471
OSTI ID:
1606375
Journal Information:
Macromolecules, Vol. 52, Issue 8; ISSN 0024-9297
Publisher:
American Chemical SocietyCopyright Statement
Country of Publication:
United States
Language:
English
Citation Metrics:
Cited by: 8 works
Citation information provided by
Web of Science

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