Luc Viatour / www.Lucnix.be
With interest in graphene reaching far and wide in the research community, every day new discoveries are made with this wonder material. It seems humans aren’t the only ones interested though: now spiders have woven webs infused with graphene and carbon nanotubes!
Nicola Pugno of the University of Trento, Italy, wanted to know what would happen if graphene, one of the strongest artificial materials, was combined with spider silk, one of the strongest natural ones. To find out, five spiders were sprayed with a mixture of water and graphene particles, and a further ten were sprayed with carbon nanotubes and water. One of the lucky spiders to receive the graphene spray saw an increase in the Young’s modulus, ultimate strain, fracture strength and toughness modulus of its silk, while spiders receiving the carbon nanotube spray also saw impressive improvements: in one case, silk around 3.5 times as tough and strong as the best unaltered silk, spun by the giant riverine orb spider.
While the team isn’t sure how the graphene and nanotubes are transferred into the silk, one possibility is that the spiders mop up the materials in their environment, and incorporate them into the silk as it is spinned. One possible use for this new super-strong silk is a giant net capable of catching falling aircraft, suggests Pugno. Once more for graphene, it seems the sky is the limit!
Reference: http://arxiv.org/abs/1504.06751
