A biomimetic modular polymer with tough and adaptive properties.

Natural materials employ many elegant strategies to achieve mechanical properties required for survival under varying environmental conditions. Thus these remarkable biopolymers and nanocomposites often not only have a combination of mechanical properties such as high modulus, toughness, and elasticity, but also exhibit adaptive and stimuli-responsive properties. Inspired by skeletal muscle protein titin, we have synthesized a biomimetic modular polymer that not only closely mimics the modular multidomain structure of titin, but also manifests an exciting combination of mechanical properties, as well as adaptive properties such as self-healing and temperature-responsive shape-memory properties.