Bio-inspired manufacturing

Spiders, mussels and velvet worms keep fiber proteins unreacted until the right time and place. We're building the same strategy as microfluidics: encapsulated spinning dopes.

Read Humanity Makes Noodles. Nature Makes Machines. ↗

Three animals, three ways to keep proteins unreacted

Spider

silk proteins held in micelles

Storage

Mussel

proteins packaged in secretory vesicles

Storage + sequencing

Velvet worm

proteins stored in nanoglobules

Triggered delivery

Illustrations © Gretchen Hooker / Pixel Naturalist

In the spider’s duct, a drop in pH triggers the fiber

Scroll the figure sideways →

Schematic simulation after Rising & Harrington, “Biological materials processing: time-tested tricks for sustainable fiber fabrication,” Chem. Rev. 123, 2155–2199 (2023). The pH values for locking and triggering are illustrative.

Store, sort, spin

Illustration of the platform: an encapsulation chip, a sorting chip, and a spinning chip winding fiber onto a spool

EncapsulateWe buildOur custom microfluidic chips wrap each spinning dope in a droplet.
SortActive researchSetting the order and timing of the droplets, so each protein arrives in the right place.
SpinActive researchControlling the trigger and cross-linking that turn the dope into a fiber.

The order of the droplets becomes a pattern in the fiber

Animation is schematic. Illustrations © Gretchen Hooker / Pixel Naturalist.

Use it, reproduce it, build on it

Microfluidic CAD library · MIT ↗ Humanity Makes Noodles. Nature Makes Machines. ↗ Zenodo ↗

Working on protein dopes, microfluidics or spinning? We'd like to collaborate.

info@impossiblefibers.com