Cytocompatible liquid crystal elastomer fibers for potential application as artificial skeletal or cardiac muscle.
👤 作者: Benecke L, Aibibu D, Cherif C
心血管
📝 摘要
To biomimetically mimic native muscle tissue new artificial soft actor materials need to be developed that can be processed into fibers and combine high mass-specific work, a sufficiently high contraction capacity, short contraction times, and biocompatibility. In this context, liquid crystal elastomers (LCE) are a promising class of materials that exhibit high actuator performance. Based on a novel spinning method to create MBB-based LCE fibers (LCEF), here we present an artificial muscle fiber capable of performing mass specific work of up to 31.2 J kg-1 while activation time was as fast as 0.466 s, resulting in an average mass specific power of 45.88 ± 23.75 W kg-1, thus to this extend mimicking skeletal muscle characteristics. Cell cytotoxicity assays were performed and compared to RM82-based LCEF from literature, showing that for the first time a cytocompatible LCEF was generated. Thus, the here presented actuator fibers offer great potential for future application in tissue engineering, e.g., as artificial skeletal or cardiac muscle.