Project description
Weaving the future of enhanced sustainable safety
The global synthetic fibre industry depends on non-renewable fossil fuels and faces challenges in creating materials that are simultaneously strong, tough and fire-resistant. Supported by the Marie Skłodowska-Curie Actions programme, the SAFE-silk project aims to overcome these issues by developing sustainable artificial spider silk through an innovative wet-spinning process. By mimicking natural silk formation, researchers will introduce metal ions and Fe-phytic acid into a silk fibroin solution to form durable molecular networks. This method produces fibres with improved flame retardancy and high mechanical performance. Using molecular modelling to ensure scalability, the project seeks to revolutionise high-performance textiles for fields such as aerospace. Ultimately, the project’s goal is to contribute to EU sustainability targets and advance the development of eco-friendly, high-safety materials.
Objective
"The global synthetic fiber industry has numerous development opportunities (reach €6.5 billion sales by 2030) in high-performance material fields such as aerospace and fire-safety textiles. However, fabricating specialty fibers exhibiting high strength combined with high toughness remains challenging due to their inherent conflicts. Moreover, synthetic fiber, extracted from non-renewable fossil fuels, still has constraints in the modifiability of its polymer chain, light sensitivity, and limited degradability. Therefore, facing above challenges, the development and understanding of new systems for scalable spinning of strong & tough natural fiber coupled with enhanced flame-retardant properties is vitally important yet urgently to be addressed. The SAFE-silk project aims to construct adaptive molecular networks in silk fibroin solution for artifical wet spinning of fibers with synergistic mechanical and fire-safety enhancement. By mimicing natural conformation transition of fibroin molecules to fibril, the in-situ carboxylation of fibroin solution followed by transition metal ions addition will introduce Fe-amino acid, and Fe-phytic acid coordination complexes as intermolecular connecting nodes. Meanwhile, these complexes will endow artifical spider silk fibers with enhanced fire-safety, due to the condensed flame retardancy mechanism. Molecular dynamics and rheology studies on fibroin solution will be investigated to precisely predict fibroin nucleation and conformation transition behavior for subsequent micro-fluid inspired aqueous wet spinning and post-drawing process. This imparts desirable scability and further enhances sustainability. SAFE-silk project is a typical multidisciplinary and requires complementary expertise from the host (Polymer Chemistry, Fire Retardant Materials) and the researcher (Molecular chemistry, Fiber science), contributing to achieving ""Sustainable Development Goals"" and ""Textiles of the Future"" of EU policies/Horizon program."
Fields of science (EuroSciVoc)
CORDIS classifies projects with EuroSciVoc, a multilingual taxonomy of fields of science, through a semi-automatic process based on NLP techniques. See: The European Science Vocabulary.
CORDIS classifies projects with EuroSciVoc, a multilingual taxonomy of fields of science, through a semi-automatic process based on NLP techniques. See: The European Science Vocabulary.
- engineering and technology materials engineering fibers
- natural sciences chemical sciences polymer sciences
- engineering and technology materials engineering textiles
- engineering and technology environmental engineering energy and fuels
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Keywords
Project’s keywords as indicated by the project coordinator. Not to be confused with the EuroSciVoc taxonomy (Fields of science)
Project’s keywords as indicated by the project coordinator. Not to be confused with the EuroSciVoc taxonomy (Fields of science)
Programme(s)
Multi-annual funding programmes that define the EU’s priorities for research and innovation.
Multi-annual funding programmes that define the EU’s priorities for research and innovation.
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HORIZON.1.2 - Marie Skłodowska-Curie Actions (MSCA)
MAIN PROGRAMME
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Topic(s)
Calls for proposals are divided into topics. A topic defines a specific subject or area for which applicants can submit proposals. The description of a topic comprises its specific scope and the expected impact of the funded project.
Calls for proposals are divided into topics. A topic defines a specific subject or area for which applicants can submit proposals. The description of a topic comprises its specific scope and the expected impact of the funded project.
Funding Scheme
Funding scheme (or “Type of Action”) inside a programme with common features. It specifies: the scope of what is funded; the reimbursement rate; specific evaluation criteria to qualify for funding; and the use of simplified forms of costs like lump sums.
Funding scheme (or “Type of Action”) inside a programme with common features. It specifies: the scope of what is funded; the reimbursement rate; specific evaluation criteria to qualify for funding; and the use of simplified forms of costs like lump sums.
HORIZON-TMA-MSCA-PF-EF - HORIZON TMA MSCA Postdoctoral Fellowships - European Fellowships
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Call for proposal
Procedure for inviting applicants to submit project proposals, with the aim of receiving EU funding.
Procedure for inviting applicants to submit project proposals, with the aim of receiving EU funding.
(opens in new window) HORIZON-MSCA-2025-PF
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Net EU financial contribution. The sum of money that the participant receives, deducted by the EU contribution to its linked third party. It considers the distribution of the EU financial contribution between direct beneficiaries of the project and other types of participants, like third-party participants.
28906 Getafe
Spain
The total costs incurred by this organisation to participate in the project, including direct and indirect costs. This amount is a subset of the overall project budget.