An Experimental Study on Electrospinning of Silk Fibroin

Abstract

Silk fibroin is one of candidate materials for biomedical application, because it has good biocompatibility and minimal inflammatory reaction. Electrospinning is a simple method capable of producing nano scale fibers from both synthetic and natural polymers for biomedical applications. In this study nonwoven matrices of silk fibroin (SF) nanofibers were prepared by electrospinning of regenerated SF solution. Effects of electric field and silk concentration in formic acid on the nanofibers uniformity, morphology and diameter were studied. Statistical analysis showed that the silk concentration was the most important parameter in producing uniform cylindrical fibers less than 400 nm in diameter. For insolubilization, as-spun SF nanofibers nonwovens were chemically treated with an aqueous methanol and ethanol solution and secondary structure of silk fibroin were determined using FTIR spectroscopy. It was shown that chemical treatment of the nonwovens increased ß-sheet content of the silk fibroin. Scanning electronic microscope (SEM) was used to observe the morphology of the fibers.