Supercontraction on cribellate spider spiral silk with wet-rebuilt micro-structure

Spiral silk from cribellate spider is a useful material with high viscidity and high elastic properties. In this work, supercontraction of cribellate spiral silk was studied in different air humidity. Humidity is implicated in the re-building of micro-structure and morphology of spiral silk, including the changes of the length and the diameter of nanofibrils. The study suggests that air humidity in the biomimetic thread process can tune the strength and micro-structure of fibers.