Spinning smarter fibres by throwing silk into the mix

丝绸纤维通常被认为是天然材料的顶峰，因为它具有比合成纤维更理想的性能。然而，桑蚕丝，我们所有的商业纺织丝绸的来源，已经经过5000年的养殖，成为理想的服装纤维，我们相信我们可以更进一步，使丝绸“智能”。另一些人通过简单地将织物浸入一系列不同的化学物质并涂在上面来解决这个问题，但是任何看到他们最喜欢的衣服在洗涤过程中褪色和磨损的人都知道这不是可持续的，也不是最好的解决方案。博士面临的挑战是如何在纺丝之前将功能性添加剂掺入丝绸中。这并不像看起来那么简单，虽然与其他合成纤维混合添加剂是完全可能的，但丝绸有一些非常有趣的优化，这意味着它对流动非常敏感。这意味着尝试加入添加剂可能会在纺丝之前使未纺丝过早凝固。因此，我们需要研究如何让丝绸变得更智能，通过打开和关闭它的流动敏感性来混合添加剂，然后重新激活它，把它纺成纤维。根据我们最近的出版物，通过平衡盐浓度、酸度和其他一些生物技巧来控制蚕丝的化学环境，这应该是可能的。然而，为了实现这一目标，我们首先需要理解它，这将涉及到使用最先进的技术，可以测量和可视化复杂系统中的流量，然后你将通过我们的行业赞助商Spintex工程有限公司将这些知识付诸实践。此外，我们的行业合作伙伴对博士学位的附加价值非常感兴趣，他们热衷于这个项目是真正的合作。由于Spintex工程有限公司是中小企业，您可以为整个业务做出重大贡献，并将使您在创业环境中亲身体验产品开发。

Silk fibres are often held up as the pinnacle of natural materials due to their highly desirable properties that often outperform their synthetic counterparts. However whilst mulberry silk, the source of all our commercial textile silk, has been shaped over 5000 years of farming to be the ideal fibre for clothing, we believe we can take it one step further and make silk "smart". Others have approached this by simply dipping fabric into a range of different chemicals and coating it, however anyone who has seen their favourite clothes fade and fray in the wash knows this isn't sustainable or the best solution. The PhD challenge is how to incorporate functional additives into silk before it is spun.This isn't as straightforward as it seems, whilst perfectly possible with other synthetic fibres to mix in additives, silk has some really interesting optimisations that means it is exquisitely sensitive to flow. This means that attempts to incorporate additives may prematurely solidify the unspun silk prior to spinning. Therefore we need to look at how to make silk even smarter, by turning on and off its flow sensitivity in order to mix in the additives and then to reactivate it and spin it into fibres.Based on our recent publications this should be possible through controlling the chemical environment of the silk via balancing salt concentrations, acidity and some other biological tricks. However to achieve this we need to first understand it, and this will involve using state of the art techniques that can measure and visualise flow in complex systems and then you'll put that knowledge into practice through our industry sponsor Spintex Engineering Ltd.Furthermore added value to the PhD comes from our industrial partner who is keen that this project is truly collaborative. As Spintex Engineering Ltd is SME, the contributions you can make across the business are significant and will give you first hand exposure to product development in an entrepreneurial environment.