This entry was posted in nanotechnology and tagged Andrea C. Prior to 2015 I was familiar with Pugno’s name due to his work on adhesiveness in geckos. Pugno was most recently mentioned here in a posting where he was listed as an author for a paper on synthesizing spider silk. 2D Materials, Volume 4, Number 3 DOI: Published 14 August 2017 Spider silk reinforced by graphene or carbon nanotubes by Emiliano Lepore, Federico Bosia, Francesco Bonaccorso, Matteo Bruna, Simone Taioli, Giovanni Garberoglio, Andrea C Ferrari, and Nicola Maria Pugno.
Here’s a link to and a citation for the paper, Sadly, this news release doesn’t explain much about the decision to feed the spiders graphene or carbon nanotubes, which are identical other than in their respective shapes (sheet vs tube) and whether those shapes did or did not affect the strength of the silk. Remember this? “You are what you eat.” If you’ve ever had doubts about that saying, these spiders should be laying them to rest. “Furthermore, this process of the natural integration of reinforcements in biological structural materials could also be applied to other animals and plants, leading to a new class of “bionicomposites” for innovative applications.” “These silks’ high toughness and resistance to ultimate strain could have applications such as parachutes.” These are still early days, but our results are a proof of concept that paves the way to exploiting the naturally efficient spider spinning process to produce reinforced bionic silk fibres, thus further improving one of the most promising strong materials. “This is the highest fibre toughness discovered to date, and a strength comparable to that of the strongest carbon fibres or limpet teeth. Normal spider silk, by comparison, has a fracture strength of around 1.5 GPa and a toughness modulus of around 150 J/g. Professor Pugno said: “We found that the strongest silk the spiders spun had a fracture strength up to 5.4 gigapascals (GPa), and a toughness modulus up to 1,570 joules per gram (J/g). To do this, the team exposed three different spider species to water dispersions containing carbon nanotubes or graphene.Īfter collecting the spiders’ silk, the team tested its tensile strength and toughness. So our study looked at whether spider silk’s properties could be ‘enhanced’ by artificially incorporating various different nanomaterials into the silk’s biological protein structures.” “We already know that there are biominerals present in in the protein matrices and hard tissues of insects, which gives them high strength and hardness in their jaws, mandibles and teeth, for example. It is among the best spun polymer fibres in terms of tensile strength, ultimate strain, and especially toughness, even when compared to synthetic fibres such as Kevlar. Professor Pugno said: “Humans have used silkworm silks widely for thousands of years, but recently research has focussed on spider silk, as it has extremely promising mechanical properties. Their discovery, published today in the journal 2D Materials, could pave the way for a new class of bionicomposites, with a wide variety of uses. The research team, led by Professor Nicola Pugno at the University of Trento, Italy, succeeded in having their spiders produce silk with up to three times the strength and ten times the toughness of the regular material. … researchers in Italy and the UK have found a way to make Spidey’s silk a lot stronger, using various different spider species and carbon nanotubes or graphene. From an AugInstitute of Physics Publishing press release (also on EurekAlert),
Spider silk is already considered a strong and tough material but now scientists have found a way to enhance those properties.
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