sciencetech-blog

comments

Graphene is one of the world's toughest manmade materials, while spider silk ranks equally high in nature - but what happens when you combine the two?

One researcher decided to find out, and found that spraying spiders with graphene particles made their webs even stronger.

But the strongest silk was achieved when he used carbon nanotubes - more than three times stronger than the best natural silk.

An Italian researcher sprayed spiders with graphene and carbon nanotubes. He found that the spiders used the particles to make stronger webs (stock image of an orb-weaver spider shown). With nanotubes they were up to 3.5 times tougher than natural silk, which could apparently be strong enough to catch a falling plane

The research was conducted by Dr Nicola Pugno of the University of Trento in Italy and published in arXiv.

In their paper the researchers said their method 'could be extended to other animals and plants and could lead to a new class of bionic materials for ultimate applications.'

And according to New Scientist, the hybrid webs could one day even be strong enough to catch a plane falling from the sky.

With a colleague, Dr Pugno sprayed five cellar spiders from the Pholcidae family with a mixture of water and graphene particles, each 200 to 300 nanometres wide.

A further 10 spiders were sprayed with carbon nanotubes and water, with four spiders in total dieing during the experiment. 

While the strength of some of the silk dropped, others - particularly the spiders sprayed with carbon nanotubes - displayed much stronger webs

It was found to be 3.5 times as strong as the toughest natural silk, which comes from the Giant Riverine Orb spider. 

Similar to another important nanomaterial - carbon nanotubes - graphene (artist's illustration shown) is incredibly strong - around 200 times stronger than structural steel

In the research Dr Pugno sprayed five spiders from the Pholcidae family - cellar spiders - with a mixture of water and graphene particles, each 200 to 300 nanometres wide. A further 10 spiders were sprayed with carbon nanotubes and water, with four spiders in total dieing during the experiment

The researchers said that the upper limit of the webs their spiders created was 'the highest reported to date, even when compared to the current knotted fibres.'

The reason why the silk was stronger, though, is not completely understood. The team initially thought that the nanomaterials coated the outside of the strands. 

But Dr Pugno said that spiders use materials in their vicinity to spin webs - and as their bodies were covered in these nanomaterials, they harvested them to help them build their webs. 

Pictured is a female Cellar spider, Pholcus phalangioides, part of the family Pholcidae. 15 of these were used in the experiment. They are more commonly known as the daddy long-legs spider