Though it sounds suspiciously like Kurt Vonnegut’sice - ninefrom Cat ’s Cradle , a materials chemist at Radboud University Nijmegen in the Netherlands has concocted a polymer that could turn an intact swimming pool into jelly . All that would be require is plentiful measure of the compound , some warmness , and 25 minutes of meter . The center , called polyisocyanide polymer , is the first synthetical polymer that can be the strength and rigidity found in many biological compounds , including living cells .
As Mark Peplowreportsin Nature News , Radboud has n’t in reality essay this experimentation , but he ’s fairly sure it would work . But more significantly , he ’s emotional about the materials find and what it could mean to the biomedical discipline .
Indeed , ‘ mechanical responsiveness ’ is a characteristic essential to the wholeness of all biological system , from tissues right down to cell . A sufficiently durable and robust material — one that could be get on demand with a handy chemical compound — could pave the way for advancements in drug speech and tissue paper engineering .
For example , a cold solution of the polymer could be poured onto a wounding to protect the tissue by quickly forming a gel barrier ( i.e. a hydrogel ) after it warm to body temperature .
Peplow explains how polyisocyanide polymer do work :
Rowan ’s polymer strands have a helical backbone with K of unforesightful peptides jutting out from the sides , each carrying long tails made of repeat carbon and atomic number 8 chains . Nitrogen and hydrogen atoms in neighbouring peptide bond to each other to give the backbone rigidness , and the carbon and oxygen stern promptly grab pee molecules , making the polymer extremely soluble .
Once the polymer is dissolved , warm up it causes the tails to squeeze water molecule away and form links with neighbouring polymer filament . Above a certain temperature , the solution transforms into a gel in seconds as the strand ego - assemble into bundles about 10 micromillimetre wide . As with the biopolymers in a living mobile phone , or the fibres in a circle , the bundling stiffens the whole structure . “ The nanoscale mechanism is the same as at the macroscale , ” state Rowan .
Researchers already know that bundling was important in strengthen biopolymers . But Rowan ’s team has measured the stiffness of individual strand and of the bundles , and has shown the relationship between the two . “ Now that we realise the principles , we can start making gel at even lower concentrations , ” predicts Rowan .
The entire study can be foundhere .
ChemistryPolymersScience
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