Non-Invasive Determination of the Complete Elastic Moduli of Spider Silks by Brillouin Scattering (CAT#: STEM-ST-0089-YJL)

Introduction

Spider silk is remarkable, possessing an unmatched combination of reversible extensibility and high tensile strength . However, there remains a large gap in our understanding of the mechanical properties of silk. The complete first-order mechanical response, which consists of five independent elastic constants, has never been measured. All conventional finite-deformation stress–strain tests so far can only measure one or two of these constants. Measuring all five is challenging owing to the small diameter of silk. Furthermore, spider silk possesses highly nonlinear, anisotropic, viscoelastic behaviour which means that the properties are altered when it is mechanically deformed, hampering efforts to extract the purely linear elastic contribution . Understanding the full elastic moduli of spider silk is important in the future engineering of bioinspired materials and in understanding the fundamental behaviour behind this unique material.