Artificial Spinning of Silk Fibroin

Accordingly, major hurdles will need to be overcome to achieve required performance including overcoming inherent weaknesses of natural silk such as super-contraction and fabrication consistency (Hakimi et al., 2007). To date, film, sponge-like silk, and nonwoven mat materials can artificially be made from silk solution, as mentioned in previous section (Vepari and Kaplan, 2007). 

As to fibers, it was reported that the inferior mechanical properties of silk from cocoons compared to spider silk result from the silkworm spinning process. If silkworm silk is processed at a constant pulling speed rather than constant force pulling, it possesses excellent properties, approaching the spider dragline silk (Shao and Vollrath, 2002). This suggests that the silkworm silk has the potential to produce better fibers, and the regenerated fibroin, which is easy to harvest, has the possibility to be fabricated into a reconstituted super-fiber. 

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