Press Release: Super Strong Spider Silk Inspired Tape Junctions
| July 29, 2022 — By Ben Skopic |
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Learning from Spiders how to Prevent Sticky Tapes from Peeling
Tape may seem like a mundane office supply because it is prone to peel away easily. However, researchers in the nano & biomaterials lab at William & Mary have discovered a way to prevent tapes from peeling apart altogether. They show that tapes can be structurally robust and potentially used in future civil, aerospace, or mechanical engineering applications.
Inspiration for this project came from studying the recluse spider’s webs (see Figure). Unlike all other spiders that make a cylindrical silk fiber, the recluse spider makes a flat ribbon silk. Because of the unique ribbon shape if the silk, it behaves like a nano-tape, being 2000 times thinner than ordinary Scotch® tape. While Scotch® tape is sticky because of a dedicated adhesive layer, the recluse’s tape silk does not have any adhesive. However, this tape silk is still sticky because of the same forces that geckos use to climb upside down. In fact, the researchers led by Hannes Schniepp found that recluse spiders deliberately make adhesive junctions in the form of loops (Fig. (b)). Using extremely sensitive force measurements, they were able to detect the failure of these tape–tape junctions and found that they were stronger than the silk itself. This is particularly remarkable because like all spider silks, recluse silk is as strong as steel! This steel-like strength had never before been observed with any adhesive junction. Using an electron microscope (Fig. ©), the researchers found that recluse spiders make their microscopic junctions with a specific angle. Mimicking the recluse’s tape–tape junctions with regular Scotch® tape, the researchers were able to re-create the impressive strength and discovered that these junctions self-strengthen. Ordinarily, a tape–tape junction can easily be peeled apart, but this unique geometry naturally causes the two tapes to be pressed into each other preventing peeling from starting, which self-strengthens the junction. The researchers developed a universally applicable model to determine the ideal geometry for any tape to also prevent peeling and exhibit extreme strength through this self-strengthening phenomenon.
Gaining inspiration from this research and using the model, tapes will be used to further enhance and tune the mechanical properties of all fiber-based materials. These discoveries will issue in a new era of high-performance tape-based materials. The complete scientific article was published Friday, July 29th, 8:00 AM EST in Materials Horizons, a leading materials science journal focused on innovative research.
Link: Publication.
Online Media
| Sep 2022 | William & Mary's student newspaper, The Flat Hat wrote a nice piece paper titled, “Biomaterials lab pioneers study of spider silk applications, publishes three groundbreaking papers”. You can view the article on the Flat Hat's website Here. |  |
