title: Metal-coordination: Using one of nature's tricks to control soft material mechanics.
abstract: Growing evidence supports a critical role of dynamic metal-coordination crosslinking in soft biological material properties such as self-healing and underwater adhesion1. Using bio-inspired metal-coordinating polymers, initial efforts to mimic these properties have shown promise2. Here we demonstrate how bio-inspired aqueous polymer network mechanics can be easily controlled via metal-coordination crosslink dynamics; metal ion-based crosslink stability control allows aqueous polymer network relaxation times to be finely tuned over several orders of magnitude. In addition to further biological material insights, our demonstration of this compositional scaling mechanism should provide inspiration for new polymer material property-control designs.
authors.affiliation: Department of Chemistry, Institute for Biophysical Dynamics, and the James Franck Institute, The University of Chicago, Chicago, IL 60637, USA.
authors.forename: Niels
authors.initials: N
authors.lastname: Holten-Andersen
authors.affiliation: Department of Mechanical Engineering, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge, MA 02139, USA.
authors.forename: Aditya
authors.initials: A
authors.lastname: Jaishankar
authors.affiliation: Department of Biomaterials, Max Planck Institute of Colloids and Interfaces, 14424 Potsdam, Germany.
authors.forename: Matthew
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Harrington
authors.affiliation: Department of Biomedical Engineering and Chemistry of Life Processes Institute, Northwestern University, Evanston, IL 60208, USA.
authors.forename: Dominic E
authors.initials: DE
authors.lastname: Fullenkamp
authors.affiliation: Department of Chemistry, Institute for Biophysical Dynamics, and the James Franck Institute, The University of Chicago, Chicago, IL 60637, USA.
authors.forename: Genevieve
authors.initials: G
authors.lastname: DiMarco
authors.affiliation: Department of Biomedical Engineering and Chemistry of Life Processes Institute, Northwestern University, Evanston, IL 60208, USA.
authors.forename: Lihong
authors.initials: L
authors.lastname: He
authors.affiliation: Department of Mechanical Engineering, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge, MA 02139, USA.
authors.forename: Gareth H
authors.initials: GH
authors.lastname: McKinley
authors.affiliation: Department of Biomedical Engineering and Chemistry of Life Processes Institute, Northwestern University, Evanston, IL 60208, USA.
authors.forename: Phillip B
authors.initials: PB
authors.lastname: Messersmith
authors.affiliation: Department of Chemistry, Institute for Biophysical Dynamics, and the James Franck Institute, The University of Chicago, Chicago, IL 60637, USA.
authors.forename: Ka Yee C
authors.initials: KY
authors.lastname: Lee