Spider silk may help develop stronger adhesives

The super-sticky spider silk may help develop more efficient and stronger commercial and biomedical adhesives that could be used to attach tendons to bones or bind fractures, researchers, including two of Indian-origin, have found.
Researchers at The University of Akron (UA) have created synthetic duplicates of the super-sticky, silk "attachment discs" that spiders use to attach their webs to surfaces.
These discs are created when spiders pin down an underlying thread of silk with additional threads, like stitches or staples, said Ali Dhinojwala, professor of polymer science and lead researcher on the project.
This "staple-pin" geometry of the attachment disc creates a strong attachment force using little material, he added.

Through electrospinning, a process by which an electrical charge is used to draw very fine fibres from a liquid (in this case, polyurethane), Dhinojwala and his team were able to mimic the efficient staple-pin design, pinning down an underlying nylon thread with the electrospun fibres.
"This adhesive architecture holds promise for potential applications in the area of adhesion science, particularly in the field of biomedicine where the cost of the materials is a significant constraint," authors of the research paper said.

Dhinojwala added that the design could potentially be used, in addition to medical applications, to create commercial adhesives stronger than conventional glue and tape.

"Instead of using big globs of glue, for example, we can use this unique and efficient design of threads pinning down a fibre," he said.
"The inspiration was right in front of us, in nature. You can learn a lot of science from nature," added Dharamdeep Jain, a graduate student and co-author of the research paper.
The study was published in the Journal of Polymer Physics.