Spider silk gut: Development and characterization of a novel strong spider silk fiber
Spider silk fibers were produced through an alternative processing route that differs widely from natural spinning. The process follows a procedure traditionally used to obtain fibers directly from the glands of silkworms and requires exposure to an acid environment and subsequent stretching. The mi...
| Authors: | , , , , , , , , |
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| Format: | article |
| Status: | Published version |
| Publication Date: | 2014 |
| Country: | España |
| Institution: | Universidad de Sevilla (US) |
| Repository: | idUS. Depósito de Investigación de la Universidad de Sevilla |
| OAI Identifier: | oai:idus.us.es:11441/102557 |
| Online Access: | https://hdl.handle.net/11441/102557 https://doi.org/10.1038/srep07326 |
| Access Level: | Open access |
| Keyword: | Fibroins Silk Fiber Dragline |
| Summary: | Spider silk fibers were produced through an alternative processing route that differs widely from natural spinning. The process follows a procedure traditionally used to obtain fibers directly from the glands of silkworms and requires exposure to an acid environment and subsequent stretching. The microstructure and mechanical behavior of the so-called spider silk gut fibers can be tailored to concur with those observed in naturally spun spider silk, except for effects related with the much larger cross-sectional area of the former. In particular spider silk gut has a proper ground state to which the material can revert independently from its previous loading history by supercontraction. A larger cross-sectional area implies that spider silk gut outperforms the natural material in terms of the loads that the fiber can sustain. This property suggests that it could substitute conventional spider silk fibers in some intended uses, such as sutures and scaffolds in tissue engineering. |
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