(507a) Using Nature Building Blocks for Advanced Nanomanufacturing

We will present two paradigms for the conversion of silk waste material into useful resources. At first, we will cover the reinvention of silk fibroin into a technical material to address technological challenges in precision agriculture, food security and food safety. By discussing silk-based edible coatings that prolong perishable food shelf-life, seed coatings that deliver biofertilizers and mitigate abiotic stresses (e.g. soil salinity and drought) and microneedles designed to inject bioactive molecules to plants, we will show how the silk fibers can be converted with a water-based process in a versatile advanced materials that can be used to bridge the abiotic/biotic interface in food and plants. By exploiting silk fibroin essential properties (i.e. polymorphism, conformability and hydrophobicity) it is in fact possible to design a water-based protein suspension that assembles in nano- to micro-meter thick materials that can be nanofabricates using advanced manufacturing techniques. The so formed materials modulate mass transport (e.g. O₂ and CO₂ diffusion and water vapor permeability) and preserve the function of biological molecules and micro-organisms outside the cold chain. In a second effort, we will present how plasma-based treatments of silk fibroin can be used to transform white waste in hydrogen energy and carbon fibers by using a reusable carbon catalyst to induce corona discharge events in nitrogen gas. The process has been optimized to handle most forms of white waste by using in-situ optical probes and infrared sensors and can be adapted to silk waste.