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Updated: May 24, 2026

Synthetic Spider Silk Production on a Laboratory Scale
Published on: July 18, 2012
New secrets of spider silk: exceptionally high thermal conductivity and its abnormal change under stretching
Xiaopeng Huang1, Guoqing Liu, Xinwei Wang
1Department of Mechanical Engineering, Iowa State University, Ames, 50011, USA.
Abstract:
Two new significant discoveries are reported: i) the dragline silk of N. clavipes spider has an exceptionally high thermal conductivity: up to 416 W/m·K that beats most materials; ii) contrary to normal materials, its thermal conductivity increases with strain (19% increase under ∼20% strain). These new findings will revolutionize the design of polymer fibers to increase their thermal conductivity by orders of magnitude.
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