Molecular dynamics simulations of mechanical failure in polymorphic arrangements of amyloid fibrils containing structural defects

• Hlengisizwe Ndlovu,
• Alison E. Ashcroft,
• Sheena E. Radford and
• Sarah A. Harris

Beilstein J. Nanotechnol. 2013, 4, 429–440, doi:10.3762/bjnano.4.50

• ], investigated fibril failure under tensile loading [21], revealed that geometrical confinement of β-sheets in spider silk leads to mechanical enhancement [22], and highlighted the role played by the peptide sequence on the mechanical resistance of amylin-derived fibrils [23]. In this work, three polymorphs of

High-resolution nanomechanical analysis of suspended electrospun silk fibers with the torsional harmonic atomic force microscope

• Mark Cronin-Golomb and
• Ozgur Sahin

Beilstein J. Nanotechnol. 2013, 4, 243–248, doi:10.3762/bjnano.4.25

• the influence of tension and bending modulus on the response of the suspended structures. Here we report mechanical measurements on electrospun silk fibers with various treatments that allow discriminating among the different mechanisms that determine the mechanical behavior of these complex

• structures. In particular we were able to identify the role of tension and boundary conditions (pinned versus clamped) in determining the mechanical response of electrospun silk fibers. Our findings show that high-resolution mechanical imaging with torsional harmonic atomic force microscopy provides a

• reliable method to investigate the mechanics of materials with complex geometries. Keywords: atomic force microscopy; nanomechanical characterization; silk fibers; tissue scaffolds; torsional harmonic cantilevers; Introduction Dynamic atomic force microscopy (AFM) methods provide opportunities for high

Self-organizing bioinspired oligothiophene–oligopeptide hybrids

• Alexey K. Shaytan,
• Eva-Kathrin Schillinger,
• Elena Mena-Osteritz,
• Sylvia Schmid,
• Pavel G. Khalatur,
• Peter Bäuerle and
• Alexei R. Khokhlov

Beilstein J. Nanotechnol. 2011, 2, 525–544, doi:10.3762/bjnano.2.57

• of fibril formation. Future work should be aimed towards the development of new ways for the formation of semiconducting fiber-like supramolecular structures with mechanical properties mimicking those of natural materials such as silk or amyloid fibers. The idea is to obtain conductive materials with