Synthetic spider silk laced with graphene can heal itself when wet

A synthetic material made from a protein in spider silk and laced with graphene can rapidly repair itself and form healable electrical circuits.

Hsuan-Chen Wu at the National Taiwan University and his colleagues collected silk from giant golden orb-weaver spiders (Nephila pilipes) and dissolved it in a chemical called hexafluoroisopropanol.

They dried the solution to create a thin film and used a razor blade to make a small cut in it, about …