They look alike and have high load carrying capacities, then can we not opt them for tech applications?
Human hair is about 40-120 microns in diameter whereas a carbon fiber (not CNTs) may range from 5-10 microns. Nevertheless, a human hair can sustain load up to 75 gm and for a head of 100,000 strands it may carry at max 7500 kg load. Is it not surprising?
Then why does human hair have no contribution in the modern tech-world? The unfortunate reason lies elsewhere. The average tensile strength of human hair is about 1.6x10^-9 Pa in comparison to carbon fibres - about 2 - 5 GPa and also quite high modulus.
Scientists are still looking forward to investigating applicability of human hair for its abundance.
