School of Physical Science and Technology, ShanghaiTech University, Shanghai, China.
Methods Mol Biol. 2021;2347:193-205. doi: 10.1007/978-1-0716-1574-4_17.
Animal silks have received extensive attention in these years due to their unique mechanical properties. The study of the structure-property relationship of animal silks is not only critical for the understanding of the design secrets of natural materials but also can inspire the engineering material designs. Fourier transform infrared spectroscopy (FTIR) has been used to study the secondary structure of animal silk, which is considered to be critical to the mechanical properties of animal silk. However, most of these characterizations are conducted on silk fiber bundles. In this respect, synchrotron FTIR microspectroscopy (S-micro FTIR) has unique advantages in characterizing single animal silks, as S-micro FTIR has significant advantages in ultrahigh brightness and high spatial resolution to characterize samples with small size. Here, we will introduce the methods for using synchrotron FTIR microspectroscopy to analyze the conformation and orientation of single animal silk fibers, which would be an efficient method to elucidate the "structure-property" relationship within animal silks.
这些年，由于其独特的机械性能，动物丝受到了广泛关注。研究动物丝的结构-性能关系不仅对理解天然材料的设计秘密至关重要，而且还可以启发工程材料设计。傅里叶变换红外光谱（FTIR）已被用于研究动物丝的二级结构，这被认为对动物丝的机械性能至关重要。然而，这些特性大多是在丝纤维束上进行的。在这方面，同步辐射 FTIR 微光谱（S-micro FTIR）在表征单根动物丝方面具有独特的优势，因为 S-micro FTIR 在超高亮度和高空间分辨率方面具有显著优势，可用于对小尺寸样品进行表征。在这里，我们将介绍使用同步辐射 FTIR 微光谱分析单根动物丝纤维构象和取向的方法，这将是阐明动物丝内部“结构-性能”关系的有效方法。
