Bioinspired Hierarchical Cellulose Fibers With Cholesteric Ordered Structure for Advanced Textiles

Area of Science:

• Materials Science
• Biomimetics
• Liquid Crystals

Background:

• Cholesteric architectures with helicoidal periodicity are promising for artificial materials.
• Integrating these into fibrous systems expands design possibilities.
• Preserving liquid crystal meta-periodicity during spinning is challenging due to instability.

Purpose of the Study:

• To develop a method for creating continuous cholesteric ordered fibrous structures (CLO fibers).
• To stabilize the meta-periodicity of lyotropic liquid crystals during dynamic spinning.
• To investigate the mechanical properties and tunability of the resulting CLO fibers.

Main Methods:

• Balancing the viscoelasticity of a cholesteric precursor.
• Utilizing large molecular size and strong excluded volume for dynamic stabilization.
• Continuous spinning process to form CLO fibers.

Main Results:

• Successfully fabricated continuous cholesteric ordered fibrous structures (CLO fibers).
• Achieved exceptional mechanical performance: ultimate tensile stress up to 25.37 MPa and Young's modulus up to 152.36 MPa.
• Demonstrated remarkable weavability and unprecedented structural tunability.

Conclusions:

• The developed approach effectively stabilizes liquid crystal meta-periodicity for continuous fiber fabrication.
• CLO fibers offer significant potential for advanced materials with tailored topologies.
• Broadens applications in intelligent wearables, information storage, and biomedical fields.