Histidine–Zinc Interactions Investigated by Isothermal Titration Calorimetry (ITC) and their Application in Self-Healing Polymers
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Enke, Marcel; Jehle, Franziska; Zechel, Stefan; Vitz, Jürgen; Hager, Martin D.; Schubert, Ulrich S.
- Abstract:
- Histidine–zinc interactions are believed to play a key role in the self-healing behavior of mussel
byssal threads due to their reversible character. Taking this as inspiration, the authors synthe-
size here histidine-rich copolymers, as well as model histidine compounds and characterize
them using isothermal titration calorimetry (ITC). With this approach, the influence of two dif-
ferent zinc(II) salts and the role in the complex formation of the amine function of the imida-
zole ring are investigated in detail. The extracted metal–ligand
ratios are utilized to design novel self-healing metallopoly-
mers. For this purpose, n-lauryl methacrylate is copolymerized
with the histidine monomer via reversible addition-fragmen-
tation chain transfer polymerization. The copolymers are
crosslinked using different zinc salts, and the resulting coat-
ings are characterized with Raman spectroscopy to investi-
gate the metal coordination behavior and with scratch healing
tests to investigate the self-healing capacity. Finally, the self-
healing behavior of the different materials is correlated with
the metal–ligand binding affinity measured by ITC.
- Research areas:
- Year:
- 2017
- Type of Publication:
- Article
- Journal:
- Macromolecular Chemistry and Physics
- Volume:
- 218
- Number:
- 1600458
- DOI:
- 10.1002/macp.201600458