Volume 10 Issue 2
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Article Navigation >  Journal of Bioresources and Bioproducts  > 2025  >  10(2): 187-198
Haiyu Liu, Fang He, Zhixiang Xu, Meng Zhang, Quan Wan, Yajun Shuai, Jie Wang, Mingying Yang, Zongpu Xu. Achieving significant mechanical improvement of chitosan aerogel with embedding or bridging structures mediated by size-dependent silk microfibers[J]. Journal of Bioresources and Bioproducts, 2025, 10(2): 187-198. doi: 10.1016/j.jobab.2025.03.006
Citation: Haiyu Liu, Fang He, Zhixiang Xu, Meng Zhang, Quan Wan, Yajun Shuai, Jie Wang, Mingying Yang, Zongpu Xu. Achieving significant mechanical improvement of chitosan aerogel with embedding or bridging structures mediated by size-dependent silk microfibers[J]. Journal of Bioresources and Bioproducts, 2025, 10(2): 187-198. doi: 10.1016/j.jobab.2025.03.006
shu

Achieving significant mechanical improvement of chitosan aerogel with embedding or bridging structures mediated by size-dependent silk microfibers

doi: 10.1016/j.jobab.2025.03.006

  • Institute of Applied Bioresources, College of Animal Sciences, Zhejiang University, Hangzhou 310058, China

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  • Corresponding author: E-mail address: xuzongpu@zju.edu.cn (Z. Xu)
  • Available Online: 2025-03-28
  • Publish Date: 2025-05-01
    Abstract
  • Building high-performance aerogels with biomass-derived rather than fossil-derived polymers is an eco-friendlier option given the increasingly serious sustainability issues. Chitosan (CS) aerogels with oriented pore structures exhibit broad application prospects owing to light weight, high porosity, and favorable bioactivity, but the dominating drawback in low mechanical strength greatly hinders their functional advantages. In this study, two types of silk microfibers with similar diameter yet different aspect ratios (1–3 (denoting as SmSF) and 50–100 (denoting as LmSF)) were used as fillers to reinforce CS aerogels prepared by directional freeze casting. The distinction of SmSF and LmSF in size led to their notable variations in distribution pattern, as SmSF embedded within the individual CS lamellae while LmSF traversed throughout the adjacent CS lamellae, which in consequence significantly influence their mechanical reinforcing efficiency. The compressive strength values could be improved from 61.67 kPa (pure CS aerogel) to 82.13 kPa (SmSF/CS aerogel) and 165.03 kPa (LmSF/CS aerogel), respectively, attributing to the transition in deformation mechanisms from a bending- to crumpling-dominated mode. In addition, the embedding or bridging structure could also change the liquid transportation property of CS aerogels. The results of this study demonstrated the feasibility of applying filler-size-mediated strategy for material structural optimization.

     

    • Declaration of Competing Interest
    The authors declare that they have no known competing financial interests or personal relationships that could have appeared to influence the work reported in this paper.
    Supplementary material associated with this article can be found, in the online version, at doi:10.1016/j.jobab.2025.03.006.
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