Silkworms as a factory of functional wearable energy storage fabrics.

ABSTRACT: Feeding Bombyx mori larvae with chemically-modified diets affects the structure and properties of the resulted silk. Herein, we provide a road map for the use of silkworms as a factory to produce semiconducting/metallic natural silk that can be used in many technological applications such as supercapacitor electrodes. The silkworms were fed with four different types of chemicals; carbon material (graphite), sulfide (MoS₂), oxide (TiO₂ nanotubes), and a mixture of reactive chemicals (KMnO₄/MnCl₂). All the fed materials were successfully integrated into the resulted silk. The capacitive performance of the resulted silk was evaluated as self-standing fabric electrodes as well as on glassy carbon substrates. The self-standing silk and the silk@glassy

SUBMITTER: Ali BA 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC6718607 | biostudies-literature | 2019 Sep

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature