Concentration-independent mechanics and structure of hagfish slime

Acta Biomaterialia
Gaurav ChaudharyR H Ewoldt

Abstract

The defense mechanism of hagfish slime is remarkable considering that hagfish cannot control the concentration of the resulting gel directly; they simply exude a concentrated material into a comparably "infinite" sea of water to form a dilute, sticky, cohesive elastic gel. This raises questions about the robustness of gel formation and rheological properties across a range of concentrations, which we study here for the first time. Across a nearly 100-fold change in concentration, we discover that the gel has similar viscoelastic time-dependent properties with constant power-law exponent (α=0.18±0.01), constant relative damping tanδ=G''/G'≈0.2-0.3, and varying overall stiffness that scales linearly with the concentration (∼c0.99±0.05). The power-law viscoelasticity (fit by a fractional Kelvin-Voigt model) is persistent at all concentrations with nearly constant fractal dimension. This is unlike other materials and suggests that the underlying material structure of slime remains self-similar irrespective of concentration. This interpretation is consistent with our microscopy studies of the fiber network. We derive a structure-rheology model to test the hypothesis that the origins of ultra-soft elasticity are based on bending of t...Continue Reading

Citations

Oct 22, 2019·Soft Matter·Katerina RementziDimitris Vlassopoulos
Apr 9, 2019·Journal of the Royal Society, Interface·Gaurav ChaudharyJean-Luc Thiffeault

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