Washington University in St. Louis

Spider silk is one of nature’s most impressive materials, exhibiting impressive strength and toughness. Now, researchers at Washington University in St. Louis claim to have created an artificial version that can outperform some natural spider silks.

A new design out of Washington University in St Louis demonstrates a promising path forward for sodium batteries, with the team producing a device that is smaller and less expensive than lithium batteries, without compromising on performance.

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.