Spider silks are composite materials with often complex microstructures. They are spun from
liquid crystalline dope using a complicated spinning mechanism which gives the animal …

Silks are a diverse family of natural materials with extraordinary mechanical properties such
as high tensile strength and extensibility, as well as reported biological compatibility. In …

A variety of artificial spinning methods have been applied to produce regenerated silk fibers;
however, how to spin regenerated silk fibers that retain the advantages of natural silks in …

Synchrotron radiation (SR) is having a very large impact on interdisciplinary science and
has been tremendously successful with the arrival of third generation synchrotron x-ray …

The ability of amyloid proteins to form stable β-sheet nanofibrils has made them potential
candidates for material innovation in nanotechnology. However, such a nanoscale feature …

Silkworm silk has attracted considerable attention in recent years due to its excellent
mechanical properties, biocompatibility, and promising applications in biomedical sector …

Through billions of years of evolution nature has created and refined structural proteins for a
wide variety of specific purposes. Amino acid sequences and their associated folding …

Raman microspectroscopy has been used for the first time to determine quantitatively the
orientation of the β-sheets in silk monofilaments from Bombyx mori and Samia cynthia ricini …

We present an overview of the physical properties of spider silks, and introduce a model
designed to study the energy absorbed by the material as it stretches before breaking. Of …

This feature article reviews recent progress in the understanding of the hierarchically
organized structures, the perfectly balanced mechanical properties and the structure …