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Filamentous Virus-based Assembly: Their Oriented Structures and Thermal Diffusivity.
Toshiki Sawada1,2, Yuta Murata3, Hironori Marubayashi3
1Department of Chemical Science and Engineering, School of Materials and Chemical Technology, Tokyo Institute of Technology, 2-12-1 Ookayama, Meguro-ku, Tokyo, 152-8550, Japan. tsawada@polymer.titech.ac.jp.
Scientific Reports
|April 5, 2018
Summary
Researchers developed high thermal conductive polymeric materials using virus assemblies. Flow-induced orientation created highly ordered structures, enhancing heat diffusion in these non-covalent bond-based soft materials.
Area of Science:
- Materials Science
- Polymer Science
- Biomaterials Engineering
Background:
- Organic polymers typically act as thermal insulators due to disordered molecular chains hindering phonon transport.
- Highly oriented polymer chains can exhibit enhanced thermal conductivity by facilitating phonon propagation along covalent bonds.
Purpose of the Study:
- To explore the potential of non-covalent virus assemblies for creating thermally conductive polymeric materials.
- To investigate the use of flow-induced methods for orienting virus assemblies and enhancing thermal properties.
Main Methods:
- Utilized a simple flow-induced orientation method to prepare films from liquid crystalline filamentous viruses.
- Characterized the structure and thermal properties of the resulting virus-assembled films.
Main Results:
- Successfully prepared films with high thermal diffusivity using non-covalent virus assemblies.
- Demonstrated that highly oriented virus structures within the films are responsible for the enhanced thermal diffusivity.
- Achieved high thermal conductivity in materials based on non-covalent bonds.
Conclusions:
- Non-covalent virus assemblies, when oriented, can form high thermal conductive polymeric materials.
- Flow-induced orientation is an effective method for achieving desired thermal properties in biomolecular assemblies.
- This work presents new avenues for developing soft, thermally conductive materials from biological building blocks.
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