Knez initially thought the process had coated the spider silk like a ceramic sheath. But Lee, the engineer, knew the thread would not remain springy and easily bendable if that were the case. He found that, unlike with hard materials, ALD infiltrated soft materials with metal atoms in addition to depositing atoms in a thin surface film.
The result, Lee believes, was a strand that is a bit more amorphous overall than native spider silk but whose various regions are more tightly locked together. The thread is denser and stronger. “If we can transfer the process, there are a huge amount of potential applications, things like artificial bones and artificial skin,” Knex said. The Max Planck Institute is looking into patenting the process.
_David Brown, LATWP