A Microphase Engineering Strategy for Spider Silk‐Inspired Fibers With Exceptional Strength, Toughness, and Damping Capacity

ABSTRACT Spider silk exhibits exceptional mechanical properties, inspiring the development of diverse biomimetic fibers. However, spider silk‐inspired fibers typically introduce β‐sheet‐like domains while neglecting microphase structure regulation, failing to overcome inherent strength‐toughness conflict. Herein, a spider silk‐inspired fiber is fabricated through a microphase engineering strategy by mimicking spidroin assembly process and microphase structure evolution during natural spider silk spinning. Polyurethane (PU) serves as raw material because its molecular structure closely resembles that of nature spidroin's architecture. Through a solvent exchange‐induced phase separation process, the long‐range oriented microphase structures are constructed. The as‐spun fiber achieves a high toughness of 626.14 ± 38.01 MJ m −3 , surpassing that of the strongest natural spider silk. Subsequently, post‐treatment is applied to induce crystallization, further increasing the tensile strength to 418.21 ± 9.56 MPa while maintaining a high toughness of 333.09 ± 20.64 MJ m −3 . Notably, the spider silk‐inspired fiber can be used as an energy‐absorbing layer in a ballistic board due to its excellent energy dissipation capabilities, reducing deformation by 36.5% compared with a ceramic‐aramid control upon impact with a ∼730 m s −1 bullet. This work highlights the microphase engineering strategy in enhancing mechanical properties of fibers, offering a simple pathway to fabricate high‐performance spider silk‐inspired fibers.

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Publication Details

Journal
Advanced Materials
Published
2026-09-15
DOI
https://doi.org/10.1002/adma.75034
Primary Topic
Silk-based biomaterials and applications
Type
article
Field-Weighted Citation Impact
0.00

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article

A Microphase Engineering Strategy for Spider Silk‐Inspired Fibers With Exceptional Strength, Toughness, and Damping Capacity

Jinɡjinɡ Li, Fan Wang, Kai Liu, Zhenyue Yang et al.
Advanced Materials
Silk-based biomaterials and applications
article

A Microphase Engineering Strategy for Spider Silk‐Inspired Fibers With Exceptional Strength, Toughness, and Damping Capacity

Jinɡjinɡ Li, Fan Wang, Kai Liu, Zhenyue Yang, Juanjuan Su, Yawei Liu, Wenhao Cheng, Sikang Wan, Yanyuqiu Guo, Zheng Wei, Bo Jia, Hongjie Zhang, Yi Zhang, Lingpeng Meng, Wei Wang
article en

Abstract

ABSTRACT Spider silk exhibits exceptional mechanical properties, inspiring the development of diverse biomimetic fibers. However, spider silk‐inspired fibers typically introduce β‐sheet‐like domains while neglecting microphase structure regulation, failing to overcome inherent strength‐toughness conflict. Herein, a spider silk‐inspired fiber is fabricated through a microphase engineering strategy by mimicking spidroin assembly process and microphase structure evolution during natural spider silk spinning. Polyurethane (PU) serves as raw material because its molecular structure closely resembles that of nature spidroin's architecture. Through a solvent exchange‐induced phase separation process, the long‐range oriented microphase structures are constructed. The as‐spun fiber achieves a high toughness of 626.14 ± 38.01 MJ m −3 , surpassing that of the strongest natural spider silk. Subsequently, post‐treatment is applied to induce crystallization, further increasing the tensile strength to 418.21 ± 9.56 MPa while maintaining a high toughness of 333.09 ± 20.64 MJ m −3 . Notably, the spider silk‐inspired fiber can be used as an energy‐absorbing layer in a ballistic board due to its excellent energy dissipation capabilities, reducing deformation by 36.5% compared with a ceramic‐aramid control upon impact with a ∼730 m s −1 bullet. This work highlights the microphase engineering strategy in enhancing mechanical properties of fibers, offering a simple pathway to fabricate high‐performance spider silk‐inspired fibers.

Advanced Materials
University of Science and Technology of China (CN), Northeast Normal University (CN), Chinese Academy of Sciences (CN), Beijing Institute of Optoelectronic Technology (CN), Tianjin Synthetic Material Research Institute (China) (CN), Jiaxing University (CN), Changchun Institute of Applied Chemistry (CN), Integrated Optoelectronics (Norway) (NO), State Key Laboratory of Synthetic Chemistry (CN), University of Chinese Academy of Sciences (CN), Tsinghua University (CN)
Natural Science Foundation of Jilin Province, National Natural Science Foundation of China, Natural Science Foundation of Beijing Municipality, National Key Research and Development Program of China
Affordable and clean energy
Openalex Percentile: Top 22%
Silk-based biomaterials and applications
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