Spiders` Super-strong Silk Relies on Its Crystals
نویسنده
چکیده
Spiders` silk is a natural material with great mechanical properties. Therefore, scientists are trying to find its secrets. Latest discovery has shown that spiders` silk is a protein, and its good mechanical properties lay in its tertiary structure: beta-sheet nanocrystals. The bonds in the structure are hydrogen, which are among the weakest bonds, however here in crystals hydrogen bonds brakes one by one and silk fails gracefully. So the scientists have studied this silk failure and with series of computer simulations found out that the strength of spider silk depends on size of crystals. They found the critical size of around 3 nm. When the crystals are allowed to grow beyond 5nm, the silk becomes weak and loses all the best mechanical properties which made it interesting.
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