In Massachusetts, in what sounds like Spider Man joining forces with Spider Man, Tufts University’s School of Engineering is moving forward on silk fiber research and building silk nano fibers that can handle 4,000 times its own weight. How did they do this work of wonder? Fiorenzo Omenetto, Professor in the Department of Biomedical Engineering, told Nanotech Now, “We generated controllable, multi-scale materials that could be readily engineered with dopant agents.”
Using their new way of creating the silk fibers, they were able to create micro-scale features no thicker than a human hair and the resulting nano fibers were very similar to natural silk but allowed researchers to engineer functionality into it. This makes it an innovative option for future uses, especially considering one of their 2cm diameter webs that weighed 2.5mg was able to support 11 grams.