Nature Communications (Oct 2016)

Nanoscale probing of electron-regulated structural transitions in silk proteins by near-field IR imaging and nano-spectroscopy

  • Nan Qin,
  • Shaoqing Zhang,
  • Jianjuan Jiang,
  • Stephanie Gilbert Corder,
  • Zhigang Qian,
  • Zhitao Zhou,
  • Woonsoo Lee,
  • Keyin Liu,
  • Xiaohan Wang,
  • Xinxin Li,
  • Zhifeng Shi,
  • Ying Mao,
  • Hans A. Bechtel,
  • Michael C. Martin,
  • Xiaoxia Xia,
  • Benedetto Marelli,
  • David L. Kaplan,
  • Fiorenzo G. Omenetto,
  • Mengkun Liu,
  • Tiger H. Tao

DOI
https://doi.org/10.1038/ncomms13079
Journal volume & issue
Vol. 7, no. 1
pp. 1 – 8

Abstract

Read online

Silk protein fibres are exceptionally strong, owing to their high β-sheet nanocrystal content. Here, the authors use an electron beam to guide silk β-sheet crystals through structural transitions, and visualize the changes by infrared near-field optics, achieving close to molecular-level resolution.