Fibrous materials are finding new applications in diverse fields such as protective clothing,regenerative medicine,piezoelectrics,filtration media, etc. Current polymer fiber manufacturing methods almost always use solvents or heat to lower polymer viscosity for processing. However, spiders and silkworms have developed benign ways of making silk fibers. Their approach of chemically linking small functional units into long chain molecules and solid fibrillar structures while simultaneously extruding the fibers is fundamentally different from current synthetic fiber manufacturing methods, where extrusion of pre-formed long chain polymers is facilitated with organic solvents or heat.  Drawing inspiration from nature, a method will be described which uses light to trigger a thiol-ene chemical interaction to rapidly transform small reactive liquid mixtures into solid thread-like structures as they are forced out of a capillary at high speeds . Besides being manufactured without using solvents/volatile components or heat, these fibers are mechanically robust and have excellent chemical and thermal stability. By exploiting the versatility of thiol-ene chemistry, highly elastic fibers and non-woven mats can also be obtained.

Bioinspired approach to greener manufacturing of fibers

245th National Meeting (2013)

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