A pristine silk fiber integrated into a photonic chip. The fiber connects three disks that can hold light. During the experiment, light is injected into one of the disks and propagates along the silk to the other two. Image courtesy of Nolwenn Huby.
Spider silk has long been known to be a super material for its strength, light weight, and flexibility. The recent discovery that it’s also an excellent light conduit, nearly approaching fiber optics, has opened new opportunities for spider silk to be utilized in entirely unexpected ways. Two research teams, from CNRS Institut de Physiques de Rennes in France and Tufts University, will present their research into the light properties of silk at next week’s Optical Society’s (OSA) Annual Meeting, Frontiers in Optics. Because silk is biocompatible and biodegradable, while being strong and having interesting light properties, makes it an good candidate for applications in implantable devices.
The Tufts team is working on creating a material out of silk that mimics plastic, but that retains its own light properties, with the hoped for goal that this will result in novel sensor technology. The French team is working on utilizing spider silk as a material for photonic chips that may offer a new way for developing implantable light sensors that monitor blood, tissue, and the body’s health.
If only someone could just figure out how to domesticate spiders…
For more read on at OSA: Eco-friendly Optics: Spider Silk’s Hidden Talents Brought to Light for Applications in Biosensors, Lasers, Microchips…