DailyDirt: The Strongest Natural Materials
from the urls-we-dig-up dept
Mother Nature is actually really good at making some impressively strong and tough materials. Kevlar and steel are pretty strong and useful, but there are a few natural materials that are stronger. Spider silk has been a synthetic target for decades, but being able to create just the spider silk protein isn’t enough to make super strong fibers. Spiders actually produce different kinds of silk for different purposes with different mechanical properties, and the process of spinning spider silk isn’t easy to duplicate without using spiders. If we’re going to use less “plastic” in the future, we might need to figure out how to re-create some unique natural materials.
- The strongest natural material was previously thought to be spider silk, but the teeth of a type of mollusk (a limpet) is apparently stronger — with a very high tensile strength that exceeds spider silk and Kevlar. Limpet teeth consist of protein packed with nanofibers of a mineral called goethite, and this composite material has a unique ability to maintain its strength regardless of its size — usually larger structures tend to break more easily than smaller ones because they contain more flaws. [url]
- Tough seashells and corals are made of calcium carbonate, and it’s been a mystery how this material forms — but a piece of the puzzle has been found. Calcium carbonate can take the form of calcite or aragonite (and usually crystallizes into aragonite in seawater), but when the concentration of magnesium is reduced or eliminated, only calcite will form. If researchers can generalize the ability to predict crystal structure formation, it could have practical applications for a variety of material science problems. [url]
- Spider silk is often cited as being “stronger than steel” with possible applications for bulletproof vests or other amazing things. The problem is actually making spider silk on a large scale — which means making the silk without growing a massive number of spiders. Various methods have been tried, such as using genetically modified bacteria, goats, silkworms, and alfalfa to produce strong silk fibers, but so far, we haven’t quite been able to reproduce desirable spider silk fibers without using spiders. (There is at least one commercial use of spider silk, but it’s used as a powder, not a fiber, for cosmetics.) [url]
If you’d like to read more awesome and interesting stuff, check out this unrelated (but not entirely random!) Techdirt post via StumbleUpon.
Filed Under: bioinspiration, biomimicry, calcium carbonate, coral, gmo, goethite, kevlar, limpet teeth, materials, science, seashells, silk, spider silk, spiders, stronger than steel
Comments on “DailyDirt: The Strongest Natural Materials”
do any living organisms incorporate diamonds?
I’d like to see a diamond-encrusted sea creature, that’d be the strongest natural material for sure.
Re: do any living organisms incorporate diamonds?
It’s not as flashy as diamonds, but crysomallon squamiferum absorbs iron sulfide from hydrothermal vents to build the outermost layer of its shell. It’s basically a snail that crafts its own plate-mail (and even wears a squishy doublet underneath).
(http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn18404-deepsea-snail-shell-could-inspire-nextgen-armour.html)
My diamond desires are prosaic. I want a diamond frying pan (excellent thermal conductivity and scratch resistance) and diamond coated windshields (scratch resistance and clarity).
Re: Re:
Does diamond coating actually provide clarity though? Either you have a solid diamond crystal that is the same size as your windshield and is laminated over the top, or you’ve precipitated diamond crystals onto your windshield using some kind of deposition technique. The former will definitely give you clarity, but we’re a long way from making diamond (or cutting?) crystals that size yet*, and I’m not certain that a deposited diamond layer would be transparent.
*- I would love to see what happens to a diamond like that when it shatters!
Also, a diamond frying pan would be pretty nifty, as long as it’s easy to clean.
Re: Re: Re:
The hardest mineral next to diamond, corundum, is now commonly used as a [very expensive] substitute for glass. (but it’s never marketed as “corundum” — marketing types being what they are, prefer the gemstone industry’s trade jargon over actual scientific & technical names)
Re: Re:
You know that diamonds actually burn right? And that, being made from carbon, frying oil will do horrible things to the coating quickly. Diamonds are nota forever.
Re: Re: Re:
“You know that diamonds actually burn right? And that, being made from carbon, frying oil will do horrible things to the coating quickly. Diamonds are nota forever.”
Everything burns, though the ignition temperature can vary considerably. Many substances not generally thought of as particularly ‘flammable’ will easily burn, given sufficiently high temperatures — a property that includes all fire “proof” materials.
Although diamonds are indeed made of carbon, the C=C bonds are extremely strong, making diamond far more burn-resistant than coal. As well as more burn-resistant than many metals. For comparison, a common frying pan material, aluminum, has an autoignition temperature of 760 deg C — while that of diamond is another 200 degrees higher.
http://avogadro.chem.iastate.edu/MSDS/Al_powder.htm
In short, a frying pan made out of a giant diamond would be quite usable. And unlike metals such as aluminum or copper, there would be zero danger of any possible long-term poisoning.
There is at least one commercial use of spider silk, but it’s used as a powder, not a fiber, for cosmetics.
And that’s my learning for the day done, might as well go to bed. It’s only 9am, but the day’s not going to get any better now!
Spider Silk has nothing on Carbon Nanotube fiber
Rice University and Teijin have figured out how to spin conductive strong threads. This video is from Jan 2013:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4XDJC64tDR0
Diamond, Barnacles and mussels
All this talk about diamond makes me wonder how hot you have to get a large diamond for it to ignite and burn like a piece of charcoal.
Would diamond incorporated into a windshield cause distortion due to its high refractive index?
One of the very tough materials is the glue that barnacles and mussels use to attach to a surface. Anyone who has scraped barnacles from the hull of a ship can attest to how tough they are to remove.
artificial spider silk
amsilk (TU Munich spin off) claims to be able to produce artificial spider silk industrially,
http://www.amsilk.com/en/products/biosteel-spidersilk-fibers.html,
the key rather being to have the proteins readily available and not so much the very way to spin them to silk