Nature can teach scientists a myriad of design principles for advanced materials. By taking inspiration from the extraordinary mechanical properties of silk proteins and from the ubiquitous compartmentalization of chemical reactions in living cells, the Bruns research group develops bio-inspired material systems such as bio-inspired amphiphilic polymer conetworks and block copolymer nanoreactors.

Bio-inspired molecular design allows to significantly increase the mechanical properties of amphiphilic polymer conetworks (APCNs), a class of material that finds applications in soft contact lenses, as pervaporation membranes, biomaterials, sensing materials or catalyst support. In these materials, hydrophilic poly (2-hydroxyethyl acrylate) is crosslinked by polydimethylsiloxane crosslinkers that feature short peptide blocks at their chain ends. As a result, nanophase-separated materials with hard and soft segments are obtained in which the hard peptide segments reinforce the elastic material, similar to the reinforcing mechanism of silk proteins.

In a second example of bio-inspired macromolecular systems, we develop force-responsive polymersome nanoreactors inspired by the marine bioluminescence of dinoflagellates, a type of plankton that emits light upon mechanical perturbation. The nanoreactors are block copolymer vesicles that feature nucleobases in the hydrophobic block of their amphiphilic block copolymers. The nucleobases pairs transiently cleave in response to mechanical forces, thereby increasing the polarity of the polymersome membrane. As a result, the membrane becomes transiently permeable for substrates of enzymes. These force-responsive vesicles could find applications in force-triggered drug delivery or as curing agents in 3D inkjet printing.