Concept

Wild silk

Wild silks have been known and used in many countries from early times, although the scale of production is far smaller than that from cultivated silkworms. Silk cocoons and nests often resemble paper or cloth, and their use has arisen independently in many societies. Silk taken from various species has been used since ancient times, either in its natural state or after some form of preparation. Spider webs were used as a wound dressing in ancient Greece and Rome, and as a base for painting from the 16th century. Caterpillar nests were cut and pasted together to make a paper-like fabric in the Aztec Empire. To make a woven fabric, silk threads must first be either carded and spun, or extracted as a single intact thread. Commercially reared silkworms of the species Bombyx mori (Linnaeus, 1758) are normally killed before the pupae emerge, either by pricking them with a needle or dipping the cocoons into boiling water, thus allowing the whole cocoon to be unravelled as one continuous thread. This allows a much finer cloth to be woven from the silk. There are more than 500 species of wild silkworms in the world, although only a few are used to produce cloth. They usually produce a tougher and rougher silk than that from domesticated B. mori. Wild silks are usually harvested after the moths have left the cocoons, cutting the threads in the process, so that there is not one long thread, as with domesticated silkworms. Wild silks are more difficult to bleach and dye than silk from Bombyx mori, but most have naturally attractive colours, particularly the rich golden sheen of the silk produced by the muga silkworm from Assam, often known as Assam silk. The cocoon shells of wild silk moths are toughened or stabilized either by tanning (cross-linking) or by mineral reinforcements (e.g. calcium oxalate). Recently, a new method has been developed, demineralizing, which can remove the mineral reinforcements present in wild silks and enables wet reeling like the commercial silkworm.

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Séances de cours associées (2)
Biomatériaux naturels : cours 2
Explore les biomatériaux naturels, les biopolymères, les matériaux PLA, les propriétés de la soie et les applications en bioingénierie et en cicatrisation des plaies.
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We introduce a skin-inspired epidermal bioelectronic patch (EBP) with unprecedented integration of graphene on silk with a facile and cost-effective fabrication process, excluding complex ink formulation. We advance the state-of-the-art by directly screen- ...
IEEE2023

Nanopore Generation in Biodegradable Silk/Magnetic Nanoparticle Membranes by an External Magnetic Field for Implantable Drug Delivery

Jürgen Brugger, Giovanni Boero, Xiao Sheng Zhang, Ya Wang

Implantable devices for localized and controlled drug release are important, e.g., for therapies of cancer and chronic pain. However, most of the existing active implants are limited by the usage of nonbiodegradable materials; thus, surgery is needed to ex ...
AMER CHEMICAL SOC2022

Recent progress in silk fibroin-based flexible electronics

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With the rapid development of the Internet of Things (IoT) and the emergence of 5G, traditional silicon-based electronics no longer fully meet market demands such as nonplanar application scenarios due to mechanical mismatch. This provides unprecedented op ...
2021
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Concepts associés (2)
Eri silk
Eri silk (Khasi: Ryndia) is the product of the domesticated silkworm Samia ricini, found mainly in North East India and some part of China and Japan. It was imported to Thailand in 1974. The name "eri" is derived from the Assamese word "era", which means "castor", as the silkworm feeds on castor plants. Another type of eri silk is "Ailanthus silk moth", refers to the host plant, Borkesseu, Ailanthus excelsa, practiced in China. Eri silk is also known as endi or errandi in India.
Bombyx du mûrier
Le Bombyx du mûrier (Bombyx mori) est un lépidoptère domestique originaire du Nord de la Chine, élevé pour produire la soie. Le ver à soie est sa chenille. Le bombyx est inconnu à l'état sauvage. Il résulte de la sélection par élevage appelé sériciculture. C'est au stade de chenille que le bombyx produit la précieuse fibre sécrétée en une bave abondante qui, en durcissant au contact de l'air, se transforme en un fil unique de soie brute avec lequel la chenille se fabrique un cocon.

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