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Nanoscale Optical Fiber From Spider Silk

Posted by timothy on from the where-are-those-goats dept.

Makarand writes "Engineers may soon be able to make the finest optical fibers with some help from spiders. To make optical fibers narrower for nanoscale applications, researchers coated spider silk fibers with glassy material which was later removed by baking. The spider Stegodyphus pacificus, a native of the Middle East and South Asia, spins the thinnest known silk which promises to yield optical fibers with a diameter of around two nanometres!"

1 of 27 comments (clear)

  1. Diameter discrepency by 200_success · · Score: 4, Insightful

    The article may say that the diameter is 2 nm. But the diagram has the diameter labeled as 1 um. Which should we believe?