Method of production of artificial silk

The Japanese company Spiber said it has found a new way to produce artificial silk to meet the needs of the textile industry.

In nature, spider silk is a remarkable material, it can be stretched 40% of the original length without breaking. Spider silk is stronger than Kevlar fiber, stronger than steel and lighter than carbon fiber. Spider silk has excellent properties because it contains a protein called fibroin , but in nature it is not sufficient for industrial use.

Humans have produced artificial silk for use as blood vessels, artificial ligaments, and are self-limited. In the automotive industry, it can be used in dampers to improve driver safety. Artificial silk is also used as a material to manufacture bulletproof jerseys.

Spiber has now applied a new process to the production of artificial silk, first of all decoding the gene that produces fibroin in spider silk. Then microbial recombinant bacteria are processed by biotechnology to generate artificial proteins by sequencing amino acids and gene sequencing to maximize strength, flexibility and thermal stability. of the final product. Artificial protein from fibroin is named QMONOS . This material can be converted into fiber, film, gel, foam, powder and nanofiber to suit different purposes.

The bacteria are nourished with sugar, salt and other micronutrients and can be regenerated in just 20 minutes. One gram of protein can produce about 9km of artificial silk.

Competition in the production of artificial silk is very exciting, but the Spiber Company said it has a huge advantage in terms of speed. Accordingly, they could create a new type of silk for 10 days and create 250 specimens that are tailored to each specific application. According to Gizmag, before November this year, Spiber will begin building a research facility to produce 100kg of QMONOS per month. The pilot plant will be operational by 2015 with an estimated capacity of 10 tonnes per year.