A person poses for a picture adding a plastic bottle to the work the Space of Waste, an art installation highlighting the problem of plastic pollution, at ZSL London Zoo in London, Britain on May 24, 2018.(Xinhua/Tim Ireland)
The new bio-based material is reportedly superior to most of current synthetic and natural materials with high strength, stiffness and increased toughness and do not damage the environment.
HELSINKI, Sept. 20 (Xinhua) -- Finnish scientists have developed a new bio-based material by combining wood fibers and spider silk as a substitute for plastic in the future, Finnish media reported Thursday.
The newly innovated material is superior to most of current synthetic and natural materials with high strength, stiffness and increased toughness, Swedish language newspaper HBL quoted the VTT Technical Research Centre as saying.
Inspired by nature, researchers at VTT and Aalto University created a new bio-based material by gluing together wood cellulose fibers and the silk protein found in spider web threads.
Unlike plastic, which is made from petroleum and carbon-based polymers, the advantage of both wood fibers and spider silk is that they are biodegradable and do not damage the environment, said Aalto University Professor Markus Linder in a press release.
According to Pezhman Mohammadi, research scientist at VTT, they used birch tree pulp, which was broken down into tiny fibers called cellulose nanofibrils when developing the material. At the same time, spider web silk was added as an adhesive.
Photo taken on Sept. 17, 2018 shows the scenery of birch woods in the forest area of Genhe in the Greater Khingan Mountains, north China's Inner Mongolia Autonomous Region. (Xinhua/Yu Yang)
However, the spider web silk used in the research is not actually taken from spider webs, but is produced by the researchers using bacteria with synthetic DNA.
Linder explained that the researchers know the structure of the DNA, and they can copy it and use it to manufacture silk protein molecules, which are chemically similar to those found in spider web threads.
The synthetic material could replace plastic in the future, for example, in medical applications, surgical fibers, textile industry and packaging.■
