Soundproof Silk May Transform How We Manage Noise at Home and Work

Early in the pandemic I decided to make a home studio and looked into installing sound panels. Unfortunately, they were generally expensive, bulky and needed professional installation. Researchers from MIT may have developed a solution for this and many other problems with a new noise cancelling silk fabric about the width of a human hair that uses vibrating fabric to "generate sound waves that interfere with an unwanted noise to cancel it out, similar to noise-canceling headphones."

If it works, there could be plenty of uses for this. Room dividers, head scarves, curtains, wall coverings, super thin cubicle or workspace walls, and sound canceling "green" screens made of fabric are just a few that seem like immediate possibilities. As the research continues, more noise-suppressing fabrics leveraging this same technology could be used with canvas, muslin and other materials as well.