Tough and Transparent Supramolecular Cross-Linked Co-Assembled Silk Fibroin Films for Passive Radiative Cooling

Prof. Xungai Wang, Member of the Research Centre of Textiles for Future Fashion, collaborated with other researchers and published an article entitled “Tough and Transparent Supramolecular Cross-Linked Co-Assembled Silk Fibroin Films for Passive Radiative Cooling” in Advanced Functional Materials.

ABSTRACT

Silk fibroin (SF) is a natural biomaterial from silk, which has outstanding biocompatibility. However, regeneration SF materials usually suffer from brittleness, which restricts their applications. Here, a novel supramolecular co-assembly strategy is reported for the preparation of a Bolas-shaped polyethylene glycol peptide (BPP)/SF film, where the peptide and SF form a robust payload co-assembled network and polyethylene glycol (PEG) fragments form supramolecular cross-linking in this network. The obtained BPP/SF film shows both high stress (27.8 MPa), high toughness (3.64 MJ m⁻³), high transparency (89%), and high mid-infrared (MIR) emissivity (90.5%). In passive radiative cooling, the BPP/SF film results in a 2.7 °C reduction in the temperature of the human arm skin and a 14.6 °C reduction in the temperature of the solar cell. More importantly, this novel BPP co-assembly SF material can be recycled and reused while maintaining its original mechanical strength. This work provides a novel strategy for fabricating regenerative SF materials with ultra-strong and ultra-tough mechanical performance.

Read the full article in Nature Communications. URL: https://doi.org/10.1002/adfm.202406920