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Feature Article

Chem. Commun., 2009, 6515 - 6529, DOI: 10.1039/b911049f


Animal silks: their structures, properties and artificial production

Chengjie Fu, Zhengzhong Shao and Vollrath Fritz


This feature article reviews recent progress in the understanding of the hierarchically organized structures, the perfectly balanced mechanical properties and the structure–property relationship of the natural animal silk fibres, as well as the experimental attempts to fabricate man-made silk fibres by means of wet spinning, dry spinning, electrospinning and transgenosis.

Graphical abstract image for this article  (ID: b911049f)