Silkworm baby eats carbon nanomaterials to spit [super silk]

After Tsinghua University researchers fed graphene or single-walled carbon nanotubes to silkworms, the "silk" spit out was stronger and stronger. According to the Scientific American magazine website on the 10th, this carbon-reinforced silk can be used in durable protective fabrics, biodegradable medical implants and environmentally friendly wearable electronic devices.

In order to make carbon-reinforced silk, Zhang Yingying and colleagues of Tsinghua University directly sprayed an aqueous solution containing carbon nanotubes or graphene (0.2% by weight) into the mulberry leaves of the silkworm larvae, and then collected after the larvae were silky and crusted. silk.

According to reports, this direct feeding of carbon-containing aqueous solutions is simpler and more environmentally friendly than direct treatment of knotted silk. More importantly, the carbon-reinforced yarn doubles the toughness against external damage and is at least 50% higher. The team heated the wire to 1050 degrees Celsius and further studied the conductivity and structure of the carbonized silk protein fiber. Raman spectroscopy and electron microscopy imaging showed that the crystal structure of carbon-reinforced filaments doped with nanomaterials was more ordered.

Shen Qing, a polymer chemist at Donghua University in Shanghai, used a 30-nanometer multi-walled carbon nanotube to create a new type of silk fiber in 2014. He believes that the 1-2 nanometer single-walled carbon nanotube material used by Zhang Yingying's team is more suitable for silk crystal structure. ".

Zhang Yaopeng, a scientist who used to feed nano-titanium dioxide to silkworm larvae to produce UV-resistant silk , said the Tsinghua team "provides a simple method for mass production of high-strength silk fibers, and its excellent electrical conductivity makes it more suitable for embedded intelligence. Textiles and sensors that can read nerve signals".