NEWS AND VIEWS 12 June 2024
A simple peptide has been found to make disordered interactions with water, forming a self-healing glass that can also be used as an adhesive coating. The findings point the way to sustainable alternatives to conventional glass.
By
Silvia Marchesan0
Silvia Marchesan
Silvia Marchesan is in the Department of Chemical and Pharmaceutical Sciences, University of Trieste, 34127 Trieste, Italy.
Glass has shaped society through the ages like no other material, and its physics and chemistry continue to captivate scientists. The main ingredients are modest — sand, limestone and sodium carbonate — yet these raw materials can be crafted into fine luxury objects. More broadly, the term ‘glass’ defines a state of matter rather than a chemical composition, referring to any substance that has been cooled to rigidity without becoming crystalline. Writing in Nature, Finkelstein-Zuta et al.1 report the surprising finding that a glass can be made from an organic compound as simple as a tripeptide, which consists of a linear chain of just three amino-acid residues. This new glass has optical properties similar to those of conventional glass, but also has adhesive and self-healing capabilities.
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Nature 630, 308-309 (2024)
doi: https://doi.org/10.1038/d41586-024-01505-7
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Competing Interests
The author declares no competing interests.
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