Regensburg 2016 – scientific programme

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CPP: Fachverband Chemische Physik und Polymerphysik

CPP 35: Activated and Glassy Dynamics of Soft Matter (joint session CPP/DY, organized by CPP)

CPP 35.6: Invited Talk

Wednesday, March 9, 2016, 11:00–11:30, H51

The extraordinary mechanical properties of spider silk and it's molecular foundation — •Friedrich Kremer¹, Markus Anton¹, Periklis Papadopoulos², Roxana Figuli³, and Wilhelm Kossack¹ — ¹Universität Leipzig — ²Max-Planck-Institut für Polymerforschung, Mainz — ³Karlsruher Institut für Technologie (KIT), Karlsruhe

Spider silk is a high-performance fiber with unique mechanical properties which are currently not met by man-made materials. It consists essentially out of two proteins, major ampullate spidroin1 and spidroin2, having alanine-rich blocks interrupted by glycine-rich sequences. The former assembles to ß-sheeted nanocrystals which are embedded in the amorphous chains of the latter and which are interlinked by a ~ 10 % fraction of prestressed chains. This causes within the fiber a negative inner pressure which is counterbalanced by the matrix surrounding the fibrils and by the outer skin. Wetting of the fiber results in a spontaneous "supercontraction" into the equilibrated state. - In the talk a detailed description of this interplay between inner and outer constraints will be discussed based on a variety of complementary experimental methods like polarized, time-resolved FTIR-spectroscopy, measurements of the mechanical modulus and micro-X-ray scattering. It enables one to deduce a quantitative model describing the macroscopic response in the dependence on the microscopic parameters.