Much happier hydrated! 💦🐛..

Nobles and kings of foreign lands desired silk and would pay high prices for the

cloth.

The emperors of China wanted to keep the process for making silk a secret.

Anyone caught telling the secret or taking silkworms out of China was put to death.

The Chinese managed to keep silk a secret for over 1000 years.

The necessity for optical interfaces in biomedical applications is driving increasing demand for the development of biocompatible photonic components. Biophotonic components are essential for applications including sensors,[1,2] imaging,[3–6] bio-micro- electromechanical systems (MEMS) devices,[7] and therapeu- tics.[8] Silk fibroin in film form has been recently identified as a suitable biopolymer for the development of optical devices.[9,10] Biocompatible silk fibroin has promise as an optical biomaterial based on a number of important physical properties.[11] In particular, silks are the strongest and toughest natural fibers known, and regenerated silk fibroin from the Bombyx mori silkworm are easily formed into a variety of material formats such as hydrogels,[12] ultrathin and thick films,[13,14] controlled-release coatings,[15] 3D porous matrices,[16] and fibers with controllable diameters.[17]

In addition to these structures, which are primarily for biomedical applications, silk fibroin has also been used to fabricate biocompatible and biodegradable microfluidic devices that can be used as biosensors or other BioMEMS devices.