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Nonlinear control of high-frequency phonons in spider silk

Nature Materials volume 15, pages 1079–1083 (2016)Cite this article

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Abstract

Spider dragline silk possesses superior mechanical properties1,2 compared with synthetic polymers with similar chemical structure due to its hierarchical structure comprised of partially crystalline oriented nanofibrils3,4. To date, silk’s dynamic mechanical properties have been largely unexplored. Here we report an indirect hypersonic phononic bandgap and an anomalous dispersion of the acoustic-like branch from inelastic (Brillouin) light scattering experiments under varying applied elastic strains. We show the mechanical nonlinearity of the silk structure generates a unique region of negative group velocity, that together with the global (mechanical) anisotropy provides novel symmetry conditions for gap formation5,6,7,8. The phononic bandgap and dispersion show strong nonlinear strain-dependent behaviour. Exploiting material nonlinearity along with tailored structural anisotropy could be a new design paradigm to access new types of dynamic behaviour.

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Figure 1: Access to the mechanical properties along and normal to the spider dragline fibre.
Figure 2: The effect of strain on the dispersion diagram and the mechanical anisotropy of native and supercontracted fibres.
Figure 3: BLS spectra and dispersion diagrams of the native spider dragline silk and regenerated silk.

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Acknowledgements

The work was partially supported by Aristeia Program-285 (EU, GSRT-Greece), ERC-AdG-694977, SFB TRR102 and the DFG (Grant No. BU 1556/27).

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Max Planck Institute for Polymer Research, Ackermannweg 10, 55128 Mainz, Germany

    Dirk Schneider, Nikolaos Gomopoulos, Periklis Papadopoulos & George Fytas

  2. Functional and Smart Materials Laboratory, Emerging Systems, DSO National Laboratories, S117605 Singapore, Singapore

    Cheong Y. Koh

  3. Department of Physics, University of Ioannina, 45110 Ioannina, Greece

    Periklis Papadopoulos

  4. Institute of Experimental Physics I, Linnéstr. 5, University of Leipzig, 04103 Leipzig, Germany

    Friedrich Kremer

  5. Department of Materials Science and Nano-Engineering, Rice University, Houston, Texas 77030, USA

    Edwin L. Thomas

  6. Department of Materials Science University of Crete and IESL-F.O.R.T.H, 77110 Heraklion, Greece

    George Fytas

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  1. Dirk Schneider
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Contributions

D.S. and N.G. contributed equally to the BLS measurements. P.P. fabricated the samples. C.Y.K. developed the theoretical description of the dispersion diagrams. G.F. planned the project and wrote most of the article; C.Y.K., P.P., F.K. and E.L.T. corrected and finalized it. All authors have discussed the results and commented on the manuscript.

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Correspondence to George Fytas.

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The authors declare no competing financial interests.

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Schneider, D., Gomopoulos, N., Koh, C. et al. Nonlinear control of high-frequency phonons in spider silk. Nature Mater 15, 1079–1083 (2016). https://doi.org/10.1038/nmat4697

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