Issue 13, 2016

Printing of stretchable silk membranes for strain measurements§

Abstract

Quantifying the deformation of biological tissues under mechanical loading is crucial to understand its biomechanical response in physiological conditions and important for designing materials and treatments for biomedical applications. However, strain measurements for biological tissues subjected to large deformations and humid environments are challenging for conventional methods due to several limitations such as strain range, boundary conditions, surface bonding and biocompatibility. Here we propose the use of silk solutions and printing to synthesize prototype strain gauges for large strain measurements in biological tissues. The study shows that silk-based strain gauges can be stretched up to 1300% without failure, which is more than two orders of magnitude larger than conventional strain gauges, and the mechanics can be tuned by adjusting ion content. We demonstrate that the printing approach can accurately provide well bonded fluorescent features on the silk membranes using designs which can accurately measure strain in the membrane. The results show that these new strain gauges measure large deformations in the materials by eliminating the effects of sliding from the boundaries, making the measurements more accurate than direct outputs from tensile machines.

Graphical abstract: Printing of stretchable silk membranes for strain measurements

  • This article is part of the themed collection: 3D Printing

Supplementary files

Article information

Article type
Paper
Submitted
19 Apr 2016
Accepted
10 May 2016
First published
31 May 2016

Lab Chip, 2016,16, 2459-2466

Printing of stretchable silk membranes for strain measurements

S. Ling, Q. Zhang, D. L. Kaplan, F. Omenetto, M. J. Buehler and Z. Qin, Lab Chip, 2016, 16, 2459 DOI: 10.1039/C6LC00519E

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