New partnership looks to industrialize spider silk production
Thursday, September 15, 2011 - 11:31
in Mathematics & Economics
(PhysOrg.com) -- For thousands of years, human beings have looked with envy upon the silk webs spun by spiders; not only are they stronger than steel but they are tougher too (a vest made of spider web material can stop bullets better than Kevlar) and can be stretched farther than rubber before breaking. Its only in recent years however, that anyone has been able to recreate the webs made naturally by spiders, and now, the company that did it, AMSilk, is teaming up with the Fraunhofer Institute for Applied Polymer Research to figure out a way to mass produce the stuff.