Fabrication of Silk Fibroin Fluorescent Nanofibers via Electrospinning.

Fluorescent silk fibroin nanofibers were fabricated via electrospinning method with three kinds of fluorescent dyes. Electrospun fluorescent nanofibers showed smooth surfaces and average diameters of 873 ± 135 nm, 835 ± 195 nm, and 925 ± 205 nm, respectively, for silk fibroin-fluorescein sodium, silk fibroin-rhodamine B, and silk fibroin-acridine orange nanofibers containing 2.0 wt% fluorescent dyes.

Novel two-step method to form silk fibroin fibrous hydrogel.

Hydrogels prepared by silk fibroin solution have been studied. However, mimicking the nanofibrous structures of extracellular matrix for fabricating biomaterials remains a challenge. Here, a novel two-step method was applied to prepare fibrous hydrogels using regenerated silk fibroin solution containing nanofibrils in a range of tens to hundreds of nanometers.

Influence factors analysis on the formation of silk I structure.

Regenerated silk fibroin aqueous solution was used to study the crystalline structure of Bombyx mori silk fibroin in vitro. By controlling environmental conditions and concentration of silk fibroin solution, it provided a means for the direct preparing silk I structure and understanding the details of silk fibroin molecules interactions in formation process. In this study, silk fibroin molecules were assembled to form random coil at low concentration of solution and then, as the concentration increases, were converted to silk I at 55% relative humidity (RH).

A highly sensitive humidity sensor based on a nanofibrous membrane coated quartz crystal microbalance.

A novel humidity sensor was fabricated by electrospinning deposition of nanofibrous polyelectrolyte membranes as sensitive coatings on a quartz crystal microbalance (QCM). The results of sensing experiments indicated that the response of the sensors increased by more than two orders of magnitude with increasing relative humidity (RH) from 6 to 95% at room temperature, exhibiting high sensitivity, and that, in the range of 20-95% RH, the Log(Deltaf) showed good linearity. The sensitivity of fibrous composite polyacrylic acid (PAA)/poly(vinyl alcohol) (PVA) membranes was two times higher than that of the corresponding flat films at 95% RH.