Spiders fed nanotubes weave bionic silk
DOI: 10.1063/PT.5.028860
MIT Technology Review : Emiliano Lepore of the University of Trento in Italy and his colleagues collected cellar spiders from the surrounding countryside and sprayed them with water that contained carbon nanotubes. The spiders ingested the treated water and went on to spin silk that incorporated the nanotubes. As Lepore and his colleagues report , the nanotubes significantly strengthened the silk, which is already one of nature’s strongest materials by weight. In particular, they found that the nanotube silk had a toughness modulus of 2.1 GPa or 1567 J/g, which is the highest reported to date. They speculate that their approach could be extended to other animals and plants and lead to a new class of bionic materials.
