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Silk is known for its beauty and comfort in luxurious clothing, but it also has a range of uses from edible food-preservation wrappers to skin-friendly wearable health monitoring sensors. A simple new approach has now made it possible for silk to also be about as tough as Kevlar.
Silk fibers are typically harvested and dissolved before they’re turned into other forms. A group of researchers from Tufts University, Imperial College London, and the University of Michigan went a different way: fusing the fibers together under precisely controlled heat and pressure. By aligning the fibers in a single direction and then processing it in this way, a remarkably strong and tough solid bio-derived material results. The structure can be controlled depending on its target application by applying more or less heat and pressure.
Fused silk has numerous properties that open it up to a wide range of applications. It can withstand ballistic impact, demonstrating toughness similar to that of Kevlar, it’s transparent to visible light and it’s biocompatible.
Tufts research assistant professor Chunmei Li noted, “Because of its strength, it could potentially be used for fixation devices like plates, pins, and screws as support for bone fractures.” Tuning the processing conditions could also produce platforms for softer and more flexible implants.
It can also polarize terahertz radiation, and the team believes this material could be deployed in next-gen communication systems like 6G networks that will quickly transmit high volumes of encoded information.
This approach to treating silk could allow for upcycling used textiles, as well, which previously would have to be dissolved before processing or simply discarded. The researchers’ next steps involve exploring ways to scale up production of the material, and its possible role in sensing technologies.
A paper on the research appeared in Nature Sustainability recently.
Source: Qichen Zhou, Tufts University