The webs of some spiders are five times stronger than steel

The spider web is one of the strongest natural materials there is.

Researchers used an atomic force microscope to badyze the web of a brown spider – Loxosceles reclusa – at the molecular level and found that each strand of its silk was composed of thousands of "parallel nanowires" .

Each of these nanospheres was composed of proteins and was hundreds of thousands of times thinner than the width

"We expected the fiber to be a single mbad," said one of the authors of the study, Hannes Schniepp . "But what we discovered is that silk was actually a kind of little cable."

The idea of ​​nano-threads in spider silk had been suggested earlier, but it is the first time that scientists can clearly see how it works – and to what extent.

The researchers chose the brown spider to study because its canvas is flat and not cylindrical. Each nano-wire is at least 50 times longer than wide . This, combined with the spider technique, gives an ultra resistant material five times stronger than steel.

"We believe that the secret of the brown spider web comes essentially from individual nanofibers," concludes Schniepp, whose study was published in October in the magazine ACS Macro Letters .

The structure of other spiders is not structured in the same way. This is specially designed for arachnids who want to catch prey at ground level . Although the links between the individual nano-sons are rather weak, they are collectively very strong.

The team developed a structural model based on their discoveries that could eventually help to create inspired materials .

Understanding the properties of the band at the molecular level not only shows one of nature's most resistant materials, but can also leave room for the design of others synthetic materials. There have been numerous investigations into the creation of artificial spider silk – for everything related to the manufacture of bicycle helmets and the healing of wounds.