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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