TY - JOUR

T1 - Spider Silk

T2 - Mother Nature’s Bio-Superlens

AU - Monks, James

AU - Yan, Bing

AU - Hawkins, Nicholas

AU - Vollrath, Fritz

AU - Wang, Zengbo

PY - 2016/8/17

Y1 - 2016/8/17

N2 - It was recently discovered that transparentmicrospheres and cylinders can function as a super-resolutionlens (i.e., superlens) to focus light beyond the diffraction limit.A number of high-resolution applications based on these lenseshave been successfully demonstrated and span nanoscopy,imaging, and spectroscopy. Fabrication of these superlenses,however, is often complex and requires sophisticated engineeringprocesses. Clearly an easier model candidate, such as anaturally occurring superlens, is highly desirable. Here, wereport for the first time a biological superlens provided bynature: the minor ampullate spider silk spun from the Nephilaspider. This natural biosuperlens can distinctly resolve 100 nm features under a conventional white-light microscope with peakwavelength at 600 nm, attaining a resolution of λ/6 that is well beyond the classical limit. Thus, our work opens a new door todevelop biology-based optical systems that may provide a new solution to integrating optics in biological systems.

AB - It was recently discovered that transparentmicrospheres and cylinders can function as a super-resolutionlens (i.e., superlens) to focus light beyond the diffraction limit.A number of high-resolution applications based on these lenseshave been successfully demonstrated and span nanoscopy,imaging, and spectroscopy. Fabrication of these superlenses,however, is often complex and requires sophisticated engineeringprocesses. Clearly an easier model candidate, such as anaturally occurring superlens, is highly desirable. Here, wereport for the first time a biological superlens provided bynature: the minor ampullate spider silk spun from the Nephilaspider. This natural biosuperlens can distinctly resolve 100 nm features under a conventional white-light microscope with peakwavelength at 600 nm, attaining a resolution of λ/6 that is well beyond the classical limit. Thus, our work opens a new door todevelop biology-based optical systems that may provide a new solution to integrating optics in biological systems.

KW - Biological superlens, spider silk, super-resolution, nanoscopy, photonic nanojet

UR - https://pubs.acs.org/doi/abs/10.1021/acs.nanolett.6b02641

U2 - 10.1021/acs.nanolett.6b02641

DO - 10.1021/acs.nanolett.6b02641

M3 - Article

VL - 16

SP - 5842−5845

JO - Nano Letters

JF - Nano Letters

SN - 1530-6984

ER -