Silkworm baby eats carbon nano material spit out super silk

Researchers at Tsinghua University have fed silkworms with graphene or single-walled carbon nanotubes, and their silkworms have become stronger and stronger. According to the report of the website of Scientific American magazine on the 10th, this carbon-reinforced filament can be used in durable protective fabrics, biodegradable medical implants, and environmentally friendly wearable electronic devices.

To make carbon-reinforced silk, Zhang Yingying and colleagues from Tsinghua University sprayed an aqueous solution containing carbon nanotubes or graphene (0.2% of the total weight) directly into the mulberry leaves eaten by the silkworm larvae, and then collected them after the larvae had been cocooned. silk.

According to the report, this method of direct feeding of carbon-containing aqueous solutions is simpler and more environmentally friendly than direct treatment of already-caught silkworms. What's more, carbon-reinforced filaments double the toughness against external forces and withstand stresses that are 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 incorporated into nanomaterials was more ordered.

Shen Qing, a polymer chemist at Donghua University in Shanghai, produced new filaments using 30-nanometer multi-walled carbon nanotubes in 2014. He believes that the 1–2 nm single-walled carbon nanotubes used by Zhang’s team are “more suitable for integration into the crystal structure of silk proteins. ".

Zhang Yaopeng, a material scientist who had used silkworm larvae fed with nano titanium dioxide to produce UV-resistant silk, said that the Tsinghua team “provides a simple method for large-scale 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". (Reporter Fang Linlin)

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