State Key Laboratory of Biochemical Engineering, Institute of Process Engineering, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing 100190, China.
School of Chemical Engineering, University of Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing 100049, China.
Sci Adv. 2023 Mar 15;9(11):eadd8105. doi: 10.1126/sciadv.add8105. Epub 2023 Mar 17.
Glass is ubiquitous in life and widely used in various fields. However, there is an urgent need to develop biodegradable and biorecyclable glasses that have a minimal environmental footprint toward a sustainable society and a circular materials economy. Here, we report a family of eco-friendly glasses of biological origin fabricated using biologically derived amino acids or peptides through the classic heating-quenching procedure. Amino acids and peptides with chemical modification at their ends are found able to form a supercooled liquid before decomposition and eventually glass upon quenching. These developed glasses exhibit excellent glass-forming ability and optical characteristics and are amenable to three-dimensional-printed additive manufacturing and mold casting. Crucially, the glasses show biocompatibility, biodegradability, and biorecyclability beyond the currently used commercial glasses and plastic materials.
玻璃在生活中无处不在，广泛应用于各个领域。然而，开发生物可降解和可生物回收的玻璃对于迈向可持续社会和循环材料经济至关重要，因为这类玻璃对环境的影响很小。在这里，我们报告了一系列使用生物衍生的氨基酸或肽通过经典的加热淬火工艺制造的具有生物起源的环保玻璃。在分解之前，末端进行化学修饰的氨基酸和肽被发现能够形成过冷液体，并最终在淬火时形成玻璃。这些开发的玻璃表现出优异的成玻璃能力和光学特性，并且适用于三维打印的增材制造和模具铸造。至关重要的是，这些玻璃表现出生物相容性、可生物降解性和可生物再循环性，超越了目前使用的商业玻璃和塑料材料。
