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Cited by 274

The DOI matches its Crossref record; 37 of the 37 references it cites were found in a registry or an index.

Nanoconfinement of Spider Silk Fibrils Begets Superior Strength, Extensibility, and Toughness

Open access
Giesa, Tristan, Arslan, Melis, Pugno, Nicola M., Buehler, Markus J.·2011·Nano Letters
DOI 10.1021/nl203108t
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Abstract

Silk is an exceptionally strong, extensible, and tough material made from simple protein building blocks. The molecular structure of dragline spider silk repeat units consists of semiamorphous and nanocrystalline β-sheet protein domains. Here we show by a series of computational experiments how the nanoscale properties of silk repeat units are scaled up to create macroscopic silk fibers with outstanding mechanical properties despite the presence of cavities, tears, and cracks. We demonstrate that the geometric confinement of silk fibrils to diameters of 50 ± 30 nm is critical to facilitate a powerful mechanism by which hundreds of thousands of protein domains synergistically resist deformation and failure to provide enhanced strength, extensibility, and toughness at the macroscale, closely matching experimentally measured mechanical properties. Through this mechanism silk fibers exploit the full potential of the nanoscale building blocks, regardless of the details of microscopic loading conditions and despite the presence of large defects. Experimental results confirm that silk fibers are composed of silk fibril bundles with diameters in the range of 20-150 nm, in agreement with our predicted length scale. Our study reveals a general mechanism to map nanoscale properties to the macroscale and provides a potent design strategy toward novel fiber and bulk nanomaterials through hierarchical structures.

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Metadata

Authors
Giesa, T., Arslan, M., Pugno, N. M., & Buehler, M. J.
Venue
Nano Letters
Publisher
American Chemical Society (ACS)
Published
2011-10-21
Volume
11
Issue
11
Pages
5038-5046
ISSN
  • 1530-6984 (ISSN-L)
  • 1530-6992
DOI
10.1021/nl203108t
OpenAlex
W2008115225
Cited by
274
References
37
FWCI
8.02
Type
journal article
Language
en
Open access
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CoChat. (2026). Citation check: Nanoconfinement of Spider Silk Fibrils Begets Superior Strength, Extensibility, and Toughness. https://app.cochat.ai/papers/10.1021/nl203108t
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Giesa, T., Arslan, M., Pugno, N. M., & Buehler, M. J. (2011). Nanoconfinement of Spider Silk Fibrils Begets Superior Strength, Extensibility, and Toughness. Nano Letters. https://doi.org/10.1021/nl203108t

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Semantic Scholar’s data is described in: Kinney, R., et al. (2023). The Semantic Scholar Open Data Platform. arXiv:2301.10140.