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Updated: Apr 2, 2026

A Coupled Experiment-finite Element Modeling Methodology for Assessing High Strain Rate Mechanical Response of Soft Biomaterials
Published on: May 18, 2015
Metal-coordination: Using one of nature's tricks to control soft material mechanics
Niels Holten-Andersen1, Aditya Jaishankar2, Matthew Harrington3
1Department of Chemistry, Institute for Biophysical Dynamics, and the James Franck Institute, The University of Chicago, Chicago, IL 60637, USA.
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.
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