Elasticity of Spider dragline Silks Viewed as Nematics: Yielding Induced by Isotropic-Nematic Phase Transition
| dc.creator | Cui, Lin-ying | |
| dc.creator | Liu, Fei | |
| dc.creator | Ou-Yang, Zhong-can | |
| dc.date | 2008-08-20 | |
| dc.date | 2008-12-21 | |
| dc.date.accessioned | 2026-07-07T12:20:40Z | |
| dc.date.available | 2026-07-07T12:20:40Z | |
| dc.description | Spider dragline silk shows well-known outstanding mechanical properties. However, its sigmoidal shape of the measured stress-strain curves (i.e. the yield) can not be described by classical polymer theories and recent hierarchical chain model. To solve the long lasting problem, we generalized the Maier-Saupe theory of nematics to construct an elastic model for the polypeptide chain network of the dragline silk. The comprehensive agreement between theory and experiments on the stress-strain curve strongly indicates the dragline silks to belong to liquid crystal elastomers. Especially, the remarkable yielding elasticity of the silk is understood for the first time as the force-induced isotropic-nematic phase transition of the chain network. Our theory also predicts a drop of the stress in supercontracted dragline silk, an early found effect of humidity on the mechanical property in many silks. | |
| dc.description | 7 pages, 2 figures | |
| dc.identifier | https://arxiv.org/abs/0808.2734 | |
| dc.identifier | http://arxiv.org/abs/0808.2734 | |
| dc.identifier.uri | http://salesiana.dossiersoluciones.com/handle/123456789/213128 | |
| dc.subject | Biological Physics | |
| dc.title | Elasticity of Spider dragline Silks Viewed as Nematics: Yielding Induced by Isotropic-Nematic Phase Transition | |
| dc.type | text |