Textile Fiber Inspired by Spider Silk

Innovation: Industry

Spintex Engineering

2021

Image: Nicolas Picard / Unsplash / CC BY SA - Creative Commons Attribution + ShareAlike

Physically Assemble Structure

Living systems use physical materials to create structures to serve as protection, insulation, and other purposes. These structures can be internal (within or attached to the system itself), such as cell membranes, shells, and fur. They can also be external (detached), such as nests, burrows, cocoons, or webs. Because physical materials are limited and the energy required to gather and create new structures is costly, living systems must use both conservatively. Therefore, they optimize the structures’ size, weight, and density. For example, weaver birds use two types of vegetation to create their nests: strong, a few stiff fibers and numerous thin fibers. Combined, they make a strong, yet flexible, nest. An example of an internal structure is a bird’s bone. The bone is comprised of a mineral matrix assembled to create strong cross-supports and a tubular outer surface filled with air to minimize weight.

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Modify Material Characteristics

The materials found in living systems are variable, yet often made from the same basic building blocks. For example, all insect exoskeletons consist of a material called chitin. Because material resources are limited, each material within or used by a given living system must frequently serve multiple purposes. Therefore, living systems have strategies to modify materials’ softness, flexibility, and other characteristics. To ensure survival, the benefits of these modifications must outweigh the living system’s energy and material expenditure to generate them. For example, spiders store the liquid components of spider silk in a gland, converting them into silk thread when needed. Some threads have different characteristics, such as elasticity and UV reflectance, than others.

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Spintex Engineering's unique technology creates high-performance biodegradable silk fibers at room temperature.

Benefits

Reduced chemical use
Increased efficiency

Applications

Apparel & Clothing Manufacturing

UN Sustainable Development Goals Addressed

Goal 9: Industry Innovation & Infrastructure
Goal 12: Responsible Production & Consumption

The Challenge

More than 50% silk’s total environmental footprint lies in the raw material processing, primarily cocoon reeling, which boils thousands of liters of water every day. Currently, there are no sustainable alternatives to traditional silk, one of the top three luxury materials in high-end fashion. However, silk is incredibly energy intensive to produce due to its high temperature processing, giving it an environmental impact among fashion materials second only to leather.

Innovation Details

Spider silk is often cited as one of the strongest biological materials in the world, and scientists have long been searching for a way to artificially synthesize this silk for human use as a textile fiber. Spintex Engineering has finally cracked the spider’s code and has developed a solution that mimics a spider spinnerets’ ability to spin fiber at room temperature without harsh chemicals, from a liquid gel. The process is 1,000 times more energy efficient than synthetic, petroleum fibers, with water as the only byproduct.

Watch how Spintex was inspired by spider spinnerets to create a uniquely biomimetic fiber spinning mechanism.

Biological Model

Spiders are masters at turning liquid s into a strong, solid silk. Inside its body, a spider stores the silk-making proteins in a folded configuration held together by ‘salt bridges’, which causes the parts of the proteins that would otherwise link together to be temporarily inaccessible. As the proteins move into the spider’s spinning duct, they encounter a lower pH gradient. This changed environment dissolves the salt bridges and allows the protein to unfold into a new configuration that can be used to make silk.

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Biological Strategy

Salt and Squeezing Turn Liquid to Spider Silk

Spiders

Spiders turn liquid into a strong, stretchy fiber by squeezing it through a small space that helps protein molecules to connect with each other.

Ray of Hope Prize®

Spintex was awarded the 2021 Ray of Hope Prize, which celebrates nature-inspired solutions addressing the world’s biggest environmental and sustainability challenges. Created in honor of Ray C. Anderson, founder of Interface, Inc. and a business and sustainability leader, the $100,000 Ray of Hope Prize helps startups cross a critical threshold in becoming viable businesses by amplifying their stories and providing them with equity-free funding. The prize shines a light on the innovative, nature-inspired solutions that we need to build a sustainable and resilient world.

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