MaterialsMan-made silk mimics spider silk
Spider silk has attracted human interest for thousands of years due to its toughness and ductility; as with most biomaterials, spider silk has evolved over millions of years resulting in a combination of properties that far exceeds any man-made material; until now
New material rivals the strength of natural spider's silk // Source: gajitz.com
Spider silk has attracted human interest for thousands of years due to its toughness and ductility. The material is also biocompatible and can be used in formulations for specialized coatings, films, nonwovens, and in pharmaceuticals. As with most biomaterials, spider silk has evolved over millions of years resulting in a combination of properties that far exceeds any man-made material. Until recently, it was not possible to use this high-performance material for technical applications, because no process was known to produce enough spider silk.
German company AMSilk says it is the first company to produce Spidersilk biopolymers, inspired by the proteins of web-weaving spiders on an industrial scale. This makes possible a new set of technical products as well as major improvements for already existing products.
AMSilk, a spin-off from the Technische Universität München, was founded in 2008 and is located in the IZB in Martinsried near Munich. AMSilk’s investors are MIG Funds and AT Newtec, Munich.
The development of this novel spin process for making high performance fibers from AMSilk’s spider silk proteins is the result of a collaborative effort of AMSilk and the Fraunhofer Institute for Applied Polymer Research (IAP). The two organizations say that this is the first successful effort to deliver sufficient spider silk material for applications development.
To date, no industrial spinning process has delivered a fiber that can be compared to natural spider silk as found in a spider web.
“Having Fraunhofer-Gesellschaft, one of the world’s most renowned research institutions, as our partner in this exciting project, is a great advantage for AMSilk,” says Axel Leimer, AMSilk CEO. “We fit perfectly together, both in expertise and vision.”
“We are very proud to be involved in the development of a new generation of high performance protein fibers. In a unique way we will combine synthetic spider silk from AMSilk and biopolymer spinning technology from Fraunhofer IAP”, says Prof. Dr. Hans-Peter Fink, the director of Fraunhofer IAP.
The development collaboration will run over at least two years. AMSilk will own commercial rights of the results with certain benefits for Fraunhofer IAP.
