The resulting films consist of a fibroin matrix filled with tiny pockets a few hundred nanometres (billionths of a metre) across.

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They treat the fibroin with salt, then mix it with the substance to be preserved and spread the result out as films, before freeze-drying it.

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They boil the cocoons in a solution of sodium carbonate to separate a protein called fibroin, which is the one they want, from another, called sericin, which they do not.

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