Materials: Spinning a good yarn

Spiders spin silk threads with exceptional properties yet use only water as a solvent and do not resort to the extremes of temperature and pressure usually seen in industrial polymer processing. All this is because spiders exploit liquid crystallinity to excellent effect whilst spinning their silk. This week Vollrath and Knight review current knowledge on how spiders spin silk and summarize progress towards mimicking this process industrially.

Liquid crystalline spinning of spider silk
FRITZ VOLLRATH & DAVID P. KNIGHT
Nature 410, 541-548 (29 March 2001)
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Spinning a good yarn
Spider silk — produced at ambient pressure, temperature and with water as the solvent — has properties that rival or beat the best commercial man-made fibres. In this week's Nature, Fritz Vollrath and David Knight reveal some of the spider's remarkable manufacturing techniques. (29 March 2001)

29 March 2001 table of contents