• DOI:10.1038/349596A0
Corpus ID: 4348041

Liquid crystallinity of natural silk secretions

@article{Kerkam1991LiquidCO,
  title={Liquid crystallinity of natural silk secretions},
  author={Keven Kerkam and C. Viney and D. Kaplan and S. Lombardi},
  journal={Nature},
  year={1991},
  volume={349},
  pages={596-598}
}

Keven Kerkam, C. Viney, +1 author S. Lombardi

Published 1991

Materials Science

Nature

NATURAL silk exhibits a strength and stiffness similar to, and a toughness up to ten times greater than, that of artificial high-performance fibres1–5. These exceptional tensile properties, the optical birefringence of some silk secretions6–9 and the molecular order exhibited by some synthetic polypeptides in solution10 all suggest that natural silk secretions might form liquid-crystalline phases. We have now used polarized-light microscopy to study the secretions from major ampullae of spiders… CONTINUE READING

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