MySheen

Eat carbon nanomaterials, baby silkworms spit out super silk.

Published: 2024-11-22 Author: mysheen
Last Updated: 2024/11/22, Eat carbon nanomaterials, baby silkworms spit out super silk.

After researchers at Tsinghua University fed the baby graphene or single-walled carbon nanotubes, the silk was stronger and stronger. The carbon-reinforced filament can be used in durable protective fabrics, biodegradable medical implants and environmentally friendly wearable electronic devices, Scientific American reported on the 10th.

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

It is reported that this method of directly feeding aqueous solution containing carbon is simpler and more environmentally friendly than the method of directly treating cocooned silk. More importantly, the toughness of carbon reinforced filament against external force is doubled, and the stress is at least 50% higher. The team heated the silk to 1050 degrees Celsius and further studied the electrical conductivity and structure of carbonized silk fibroin fibers. Raman spectroscopy and electron microscope imaging show that the crystal structure of carbon reinforced wires doped with nanomaterials is more orderly.

Shen Qing, a polymer chemist at Donghua University in Shanghai, who made a new type of silk fiber from 30 nm multi-walled carbon nanotubes in 2014, believes that the 1murine and 2nm single-walled carbon nanotube materials used by Zhang Yingying's team are "more suitable for integrating into the crystal structure of silk fibroin".

Zhang Yaopeng, a material scientist who produced anti-ultraviolet degradation silk by feeding silkworm larvae with nano-titanium dioxide, said that the Tsinghua team "provided a simple way to produce high-strength silk fibers on a large scale. Its excellent electrical conductivity makes it more suitable for embedded smart textiles and sensors that can read neural signals." (reporter Fang Linlin)

 
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