Water-responsive rapid recovery of natural cellular material

• This is the world׳s first investigation into recovery properties of luffa sponge.
• We provided the evidence of stimuli–responsive behaviour at three length scales.
• We revealed the most influential factors for stimuli–responsive behaviour of luffa.
• We may expand the applications of cellulose-based natural biological materials.

Insight into the stimuli–responsive behaviour of biological materials with hierarchical microstructures is essential for designing new sustainable materials and structures. Shape memory, self-healing and self-repairing will become valuable characteristics of advanced materials. Here we report the water-triggered shape recovery of a natural biological material, the luffa sponge. The longitudinally crushed luffa sponge column can recover up to 98% of its original shape after it is immersed in water. The mechanical properties of the luffa sponge can also be recovered, to a large extent, after a subsequent drying process. The effects of strain rate, crushing strains, loading cycles, and temperature/duration of water treatment of the drying process on the shape recovery ratio and the energy dissipation recovery ratio have been investigated. The results from this study have demonstrated that the luffa sponge material possesses remarkable shape memory effects and mechanical recovery features which could be exploited or biomimicked for the design of water-responsive smart materials undergoing large deformations.

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