Tuesday, April 29, 2008

Glass Micromachine Makes Silk the Same Way Spiders Do


Glass Micromachine Makes Silk the Same Way Spiders Do:

"A team at the Technical University of Munich in Germany has designed a glass chip pierced with micro-sized tubes that act the same way as spider silk glands, and can be used to replicate the initial stages of natural silk production. It's an interesting development since production of artificial spider silk has proven difficult in industrial quantities and qualities, and its tensile strength to density ratio is five times that of steel, making it potentially very useful as armor and in medical applications."

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