9/10/2023 0 Comments Carbon nanotubes spider silk![]() In the original prepublication they say: If I eat graphene, will significant amounts end up in my hair, skin, nails etc.? or will most of it just leave by the usual exits? Do spiders incorporate anything they eat into their silk? Yes, not a lot of explanation or investigation of whether the graphene actually gets taken up by the spiders and then ends up in the silk. In the published version they conveniently changed the amino acid composition of the silk to make their protein models work.Īlso, in the (published, peer-reviewed) discussion the authors conveniently ignore the fibres that performed *worse* than native silk and focus on the one that was *amazing*. Waiting for the spider to spin silk IN THE SAME BOX YOU SPRAYED IT IN smacks of contamination. You can actively collect silk by chasing a spider across a (clean) surface and picking the silk up, or by forcibly silking the spider. In neither the unpublished manuscript linked in the article, nor in the “peer-reviewed” paper published in 2dMaterials did the authors *clearly* describe how they collected the silk. ![]() A significant number of them died and there is no discussion of dehydration, starvation or death-by-experimentation. The authors made no effort to care for their spiders. Even if this did happen, there’s no postulation on how the addition of this ingredient (which no spider has ever come across in the wild long enough to adapt to) will affect how silk proteins are converted to fibres during extrusion (tl dw it’s a very sensitive process – Johansson and Rising have a lovely paper reviewing this in the context of synthetic silk). The authors have proposed no method by which these spiders can “eat” carbon nanostructures and selectively incorporate them into their silk. Posted in chemistry hacks Tagged biochemistry, biology, Chemistry, graphene, nanotube, silk, silkworm, spider Post navigation If you prefer your insects alive, maybe you also like their sound. In fact, here’s a simple hack to ground mosquitoes permanently. Let’s not make aircraft-grade aluminum mosquitoes though. After the treatment, the silk is measured, and in some cases, the silk is significantly tougher and surpasses all the naturally occurring fibers.Ĭommercial spider silk harvesting hasn’t been successful, so maybe the next billionaire is reading this right now. The carbon is suspended in water and sprayed into the spider’s habitat. These silks can be conductive, insulating, or stronger depending on the doping elements.Īt Italy’s University of Trento, they are pushing the limits and dosing spiders with single-wall carbon nanotubes and graphene. In addition to making their bodies harder, silk-producing creatures like worms and spiders can spin webs with augmented properties. Like Mega Man, they absorb the metals to improve themselves. In addition to their enormous strength, these fibers are biodegradable, offering new applications for textiles such as medical uniforms.Some of the creepy-crawlers under our feet, flitting through the air, and waiting on silk webs, incorporate metals into their rigid body parts and make themselves harder. "It's still early, but the results represent a proof of concept that paves the way for using the spider spinning process, natural and efficient, to create reinforced silk bionic fibers, optimizing one of the most promising high strength materials. Professor Nicola Pugno of the University of Trento (Italy), who is responsible for leading the research, said that the strength of improved silk was comparable to that of the teeth of a macaw or the most resistant carbon fibres. The team observed an improvement in mechanical properties compared to the original silk, achieving a tensile strength of up to ~5.4 GPa and a tenacity of ~1570 J g-1. Recently, the team presented its research in a document entitled Spider silk reinforced by graphene or carbon nanotubes, published in the online magazine 2D Materials? Once the solutions were ingested and the silk had been extracted from the spiders, it was discovered that the grafen and nanotubes had become part of the silk. To find out what would happen to these values if spiders ingested grafen, researchers funded by the European Union through the GRAPHENE Flagship Initiative sprayed grafen and carbon nanotubes (NTC) solutions where spiders were confined. Spider silk combines a high breaking tension ~1.5 GPa with a high tenacity ~150 J g-1.
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