Bio-inspired metal-coordination crosslinking: easy access to broad dynamics when engineering polymer gel mechanics

Efforts to engineer polymer material mechanics is increasingly coupled to the design of transient
crosslink dynamics. We have sought to gain a deeper understanding of how polymer gel
mechanical properties can be controlled over multiple hierarchical time-scales via design of bioinspired
metal-coordinate crosslink structure on multiple length-scales. By utilizing metal ioncoordination
complexes and metal nanoparticle-coordination junctions as supra-molecular
crosslink structures, we have gained unique access to network dynamics on the microscopic
scale, and thereby opportunities to broadly shape the distribution of network stress relaxation on
the macroscopic scale. Our findings offer deeper insights on how to engineer gel stress relaxation
mechanics directly via design of supramolecular crosslink structure dynamics, and could help
improve our understanding of spatio-temporal molecular hierarchy in loadbearing biological
materials.
Li, Q., Barrett, D. G., Messersmith, P. B. & Holten-Andersen, N. Controlling hydrogel
mechanics via bioinspired polymer-nanoparticle bond dynamics. ACS Nano 2016, 10, 1317-
1324, DOI: 10.1021/acsnano.5b06692
Grindy, S. C., Learsch, R., Mozhdehi, D., Cheng, J., Barrett, D. G., Guan, Z., Messersmith, P. B.
& Holten-Andersen, N. Control of hierarchical polymer mechanics with bioinspired metalcoordination
dynamics. Nature Materials 2015, 14, 1210-1216, DOI:10.1038/nmat4401

Bio:
Doherty Professor in Ocean Utilization, DMSE, MIT, 2014-Current
John Chipman Assistant Professor, DMSE, MIT, 2012-2014 Associate Professor, Program in Polymers and Soft Matter, MIT, 2012-Current Post-Doc University of Chicago, 2008-2012 Ph.D. Biomolecular Science and Engineering, University of California-Santa Barbara, 2008
M.Sc. Cell Biology, University of Copenhagen, 2001 B.Sc.Hon. Molecular Biology, University of Canterbury, 2000
B.Sc. Biology, University of Copenhagen, 1998