Silk

A new substance is claimed to combine strength and toughness, by mixing wood fibers with spider silk.

It’s no secret that spider silk is one of nature’s most incredible materials. Now scientists have discovered a weird new ability. A team led by MIT has found that when exposed to a certain level of humidity, spider silk suddenly shrinks and twists, which could make it useful in artificial muscles.

​If you need to close up an injury or incision in human body tissue, you use sutures, staples or a surgical adhesive … right? Well, if technology that's currently being developed at Arizona State University gets commercialized, liquid silk combined with gold may eventually be a better way to go.

Strong as steel and tougher than Kevlar, spider silk is one of nature’s most impressive materials. Researchers from Washington University in St. Louis have now engineered bacteria to produce biosynthetic spider silk that they say performs as well as the real stuff.

It’s long been thought that spiders were "ballooning" on silk parachutes thanks to the wind picking them up, but a new study has found that the creatures are actually making use of atmospheric electric fields instead.

Strong and light, spider silk is one of the most impressive materials in the natural world. Now, scientists in Germany and Switzerland have found a new use for spider silk – wrapping up cancer drugs to protect them until they can reach their tumorous targets.

Spider silk has long held the title of strongest natural biomaterial. Now, researchers at the KTH Royal Institute of Technology have developed a new biomaterial out of wood nanofibers that steals the strength record.

Spider silk is among the strongest known materials. While some researchers are pursuing synthetic spider silk, scientists at MIT have taken another approach … they've devised a method of using silkworm silk to produce fibers that are almost as stiff as spider silk.

​The ultra-fine nature of spider silk has provided inspiration for scientists developing sensitive new types of microphones. Further down the track, these new devices could be put to use in advanced hearing aids and phones that pick up sounds at much lower frequencies.

​Natural spider silk is already amazingly strong stuff, plus scientists have developed synthetic versions of the material. Now, however, researchers have split the difference – they've created silk that comes from spiders, but that has added man-made ingredients which give it extra strength.

​​So far as nature's wonder materials go, spider silk is right up there. Now scientists have uncovered another exciting application for it, using it to bridge the gap between severed nerves that would otherwise struggle to be repaired.​

Chronic middle ear disease can lead to infection, pain, hearing loss and perforated eardrums, and may take several rounds of surgery to address the problems. Now an Australian team of researchers has developed the ClearDrum, a silk implant that can repair a damaged eardrum with just one procedure.