Sensing fluctuating airflow with spider silk.

ABSTRACT: The ultimate aim of flow sensing is to represent the perturbations of the medium perfectly. Hundreds of millions of years of evolution resulted in hair-based flow sensors in terrestrial arthropods that stand out among the most sensitive biological sensors known, even better than photoreceptors which can detect a single photon (10^-18-10^-19 J) of visible light. These tiny sensory hairs can move with a velocity close to that of the surrounding air at frequencies near their mechanical resonance, despite the low viscosity and low density of air. No man-made technology to date demonstrates comparable efficiency. Here we show that nanodimensional spider silk captures fluctuating airflow with maximum physical efficiency (V_silk/V_air ∼ 1) from 1 Hz to 50 k

SUBMITTER: Zhou J 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC5699058 | biostudies-literature | 2017 Nov

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature