Graphene fed to silkworms - produces 'mechanically advanced silk'
Graphene, the "super material" with a one-atom thick layer of carbon, has been fed to silkworm larvae creating "mechanically enhanced silk". A team at Tsinghua University in Beijing fed the silkworms mulberry leaves coated in a solution containing 0.2% graphene. The resulting silk was twice as strong as ordinary silk, could cope with 50% more stress and was shown to be conductive after being heated at temperatures of up to 1,050 degrees Celsius. This could have major implications for the future of wearables – we would no longer have to wear bulky devices but could have personalised garments concealing the technology.

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Graphene just keeps getting better and better. The so-called super material – a one-atom-thick layer of carbon that has proven to be incredibly strong, flexible, light and conductive – has now been fed to larval silkworms which then created "mechanically enhanced silk".

The find could have huge implications for the future of wearables, considering the conductive material could be weaved into textiles, and our clothing embedded with technology. We would no longer have to wear devices that are so often bulky and conspicuous but would have individualised garments concealing the tech.

Silk is already pretty strong, and also one of the most desirable fabrics in the world, so it was the obvious choice for the experiment carried out by a team from Tsinghua University. They fed the silkworms mulberry leaves coated in a solution made up with 0.2 per cent of carbon nanotubes or graphene, reports the Scientific American.

They then let the worms make their cocoons and collected the silk once it was completed. The team found carbon nanomaterials in both the silk, and the worm's excrement - suggesting more work needs to be done to find out how much carbon the worms need to be fed to get the optimum silk since not all of it is being transferred to the resulting product. The approach was chosen over coating already made silk with carbon, because this would also involve the introduction of chemicals.