Green Options » polymers

Bio-Mimicry Science Makes Spider Silk Stronger

Michael Ricciardi — Tue, 28 Jul 2009 18:29:01 +0000

Move over Nature…the famed strength of a spider’s web silk now has some competition. Bio-mimicry and bio-materials–both emerging new sciences that seek to utilize and/or reproduce or modify natural biological materials and properties for commercial usage–has been seeing an explosion of research and experimentation of late. Recent bio-materials experiments with spider dragline silk (taken from an Araneus spider’s silk glands) have resulted in a bio-mimicked new material that is stronger than its natural version.

To make this new material, the scientists had to “infiltrate” the inner protein structure of the spider’s dragline, silk threads with a metal ion of zinc (Zn 2+). These experiments built on earlier analyses of the mandibles of leaf-cutter ants, locusts, and marine polychaetes (a type of large sea worm) that showed a strong relationship between accumulated Zinc, Aluminum and Titanium levels in these materials and their high tensile and hardness properties. Previous attempts to incorporate such metals synthetically had proven to be too great a technological challenge.

Growing Plastic: A New Use for Biomass

Lisa Wojnovich — Fri, 19 Jun 2009 12:00:10 +0000

In the constant push for ever newer and greener technology and energy, we sometimes forget that it is often both simpler and cheaper to revisit old techniques in new ways. And that’s exactly what a group of researchers in California has done.

Scientists: Plastic Solar Cells Could be Hung on Wall Like Posters

Ariel Schwartz — Mon, 01 Dec 2008 21:26:29 +0000

What if you could walk into your local hardware store and buy a cheap solar panel to hang on your wall? That may not be such a far-fetched idea according to scientists at the UCLA Henri Samueli School of Engineering and Applied Sciences. A team of researchers has designed a new polymer (plastic) with greater sunlight absorption and conversion capabilities than any polymer seen before.