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A sustainable approach to prevent filler settling in vitrimeric polymers, using a mechanically recycled composite filler, is reported. The resulting composites demonstrate over 40% improvements in flexural strength and an over 70% improvement in material hardness while maintaining recyclability and mechanical performance after remanufacturing.

Silk fibroin interactions with metallic surfaces can provide utility for medical materials and devices. Toward this goal, titanium alloy (Ti6Al4 V) was covalently grafted with polyacrylamide via electrochemically reducing 4-nitrobenzene diazonium salt in the presence of acrylamide. Analysis of the modified surfaces with FT-IR spectra, SEM and AFM were consistent with surface grafting. Functionalised titanium samples with a silk fibroin membrane, with and without impregnated therapeutics, were used to assess cytocompatibility and drug delivery. Initial cytocompatibility experiments using fibroblasts showed that the functionalised samples, both with and without silk fibroin coatings, supported significant increases between 72-136 % in cell metabolism, compared to the controls after 7 days. A 7-days release profiling showed consistent bacterial inhibition through gentamicin release with average inhibition zones of 239 mm 2 . Over a 5-week period, silk fibroin coated samples, both with and without growth factors, supported better human mesenchymal stem cell metabolism with increases reaching 1031 % and 388 %, respectively, compared to samples without the silk fibroin coating with., (© 2023 The Authors. ChemPlusChem published by Wiley-VCH GmbH.)