Silk the ancient material of the future Fiorenzo Omenetto

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[Applause]

thank you and thrilled thrilled to be

here I’m going to talk about a new old

material that still continues to amaze

us and that my impact the way we think

about material science high-technology

and maybe along the way also do some

stuff for medicine and for global health

and help reforestation so that’s kind of

a bold statement I’ll tell you a little

bit more this material actually has some

traits that make it seem almost too good

to be true it’s sustainable it’s a

sustainable material that is processed

all in water and at room temperature and

it’s biodegradable with the clock so you

can watch it dissolve instantaneously in

a glass of water and have it stable for

years it’s edible

it’s implantable in the human body

without causing any immune response it

actually gets reintegrated in the body

and its technological so it can do

things like micro electronics and maybe

photonics you and the material looks

something like this in fact this this

material you see is clear and

transparent this is the components of

this material are just water and protein

so this material is is silk and it’s so

it’s kind of different from what we’re

used to thinking about it’s okay and so

the question is how do you reinvent

something that has been around for five

millennia the process of discovery

generally is inspired by nature and so

we marvel at silkworm the silkworm that

you see here spinning its fiber the so

current does a remarkable thing uses

these two ingredients protein and water

that are in its gland to make a material

that is exceptionally tough for

protection so comparable to technical

fibers like like Kevlar and so in the

reverse engineering process that we know

about and that we’re familiar with in

for for the textile industry the textile

industry goes and unwinds the cocoon and

then weaves glamorous things we want to

know how you go from water and protein

to this liquid Kevlar and to this

natural Kevlar so so the inside is is is

how do you actually reverse engineer

this and go from cocoon to gland and get

water and protein that is your starting

material and this is an insight that

came about two decades ago from

from a person that I’m very they’re very

fortunate to work with David Kaplan and

so we get the starting material and so

the starting material is back to the

basic building block and then we use

this to do a variety of things like for

example that films and we take advantage

of something that is very simple the

recipe to make those films is is to take

advantage of the fact that proteins are

extremely smart at what they do they

find their way to self-assemble so the

recipe is simple you take the silk

solution you pour it and you wait for

the protein to self-assemble and then

you detach the protein you get this film

as the proteins find each other as the

water evaporates but I mentioned that

the film is also technological and so

what does that mean it means that that

you can you can interface it with some

of the things that are typical of

technology like like the micro

electronics and and nanoscale technology

and the image of the DVD here is just to

illustrate a point that the silk silk

follows very very subtle topographies of

the surface which means that it can

replicate features on the nanoscale so

it would be able to replicate the

information that is on that is on the

DVD and we can store information this

film of water and proteins so we tried

something out and we wrote a message and

a piece of silk which is right here and

the message is over there and much like

in the DVD you can read it out optically

and this requires a stable hand so this

is what I decided to do it on stage in

front of a thousand people ok so so let

me see so as you see the the film going

transparently through there and then

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and the most remarkable feat is that my

hand actually stayed still long enough

to do that so once you have once you

have these these these attributes of

this material then you can do you can do

a lot of things it’s actually not

limited to films and so the material can

assume a lot of formats and then you

kind of go a little crazy and so you do

various optical components or you do

micro prism arrays like the ones that

you have you know the reflective tape

that you have on your running shoes or

you can do beautiful things that if if

the camera can capture you can make you

can add a third dimensionality to to the

film and if the angle is right you can

actually see a hologram appear in this

film of silk but you can do other things

you can imagine that then maybe you can

use a pure protein to guide light and so

we’ve made optical fibers and and but

silk is versatile and it kind of goes

beyond optics and so you can think of

different formats so for instance if

you’re afraid of going to the doctor and

getting stuck with a needle we do micro

needle arrays what you see there on the

screen is a human hair superimposed on

the needles made of silk just to give

you a sense of size you can do bigger

things you can do

gears and nuts and bolts that you can

buy at Whole Foods and and the gears

work in water as well so is to think of

alternative mechanical parts and maybe

you can use that liquid Kevlar if you

need something strong to replace

peripheral veins for example or maybe an

entire bone and so you have here a

little example of a small skull and we

call mini Yorick but you can do things

like cups for example and so if you add

a little bit of gold if you added a

little bit of semiconductors you could

do sensors that stick on the surfaces of

foods you can do electronic pieces that

fold and wrap or you know if your

fashion for some silk led tattoos

so there’s versatility and as you see in

the material formats that you can that

you can do with that with silk but there

are still some unique traits I mean why

would you want to do all these things

and so for real now you mentioned it

briefly at the beginning the protein is

biodegradable and biocompatible and you

see here a picture of a tissue section

and so what does that mean that it’s the

display degree than when compatible you

can implant it in the body without

needing to retrieve what is implanted

which means with all the devices that

you

you’ve seen before in all the formats in

principle can can be implanted and and

disappear and what you see there in the

tissue section in fact as you see that

reflector tape so much like you’re seen

at night by a car then the ideas that

you can see if you illuminate tissue you

can see deeper parts of tissue because

there’s that reflective tape there that

is that a silk and you see there it gets

reintegrated in tissue and reintegration

in the human body is not the only thing

but reintegration in the environment is

important so you have a clock you have

protein and now a silk cup like this can

be thrown away without guilt

and unlike unlike the polystyrene cups

that that unfortunately fill our

landfills every day it’s edible so you

can do smart packaging around food that

you can cook with the food it doesn’t

taste good so I’m gonna need some help

for that but probably the most

remarkable thing is that it comes full

circle silk

during its self-assembly process it acts

like a cocoon for biological matter and

so if you change the recipe and you add

things when you’re poor so you add

things to your liquid silk solution

where these things are enzymes or

antibodies or vaccines then the the

self-assembly process preserves a

biological function of these dopants so

it makes the materials that

environmentally active and an

interactive so that screw that you

thought about beforehand can actually be

used to screw a bone together fractured

bone together and deliver drugs at the

same time while your bone is healing for

example or or you could put drugs in

your wallet and not in your fridge so

we’ve made a silk card with penicillin

in it and we stored penicillin at sixty

degrees C so at 140 degrees Fahrenheit

for two months without loss of efficacy

of the penicillin and so that could be

that could be potentially a good

alternative to the solar power

refrigerated camels and and of course

there’s no use in storage if you can’t

use and so there is this other unique

material trait that that these materials

have in that they’re programmable EDA

gradable and so and so what you see

there is the difference in the top is

you have a film that has been programmed

not to degrade and in the bottom a film

that has been programmed to degrade and

water and what you see is that the film

and the bottom releases what is inside

it so it allows for the recovery of what

we’ve stored before and so this allows

for control delivery of drugs and for

for reintegration and the environment

and all of these formats that you’ve

seen so the threat of discovery that we

have really is a thread

we’re impassionate with this idea that

whatever you want to do whether you want

to replace a vein or a bone or maybe be

more sustainable in microelectronics

perhaps drink a coffee in a cup and

throw it away without guilt maybe carry

your drugs in your pocket deliver them

inside your body or deliver them across

the desert the answer may be in a thread

of silk thank you

[Applause]

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