A Novel Facile and Green Synthesis Protocol to Prepare High Strength Regenerated Silk Fibroin/SiO2 Composite Fiber

Abstract

In this work, regenerated silk fibroin (RSF) and silicon dioxide (SiO2) composite fiber was successfully extruded by wet spinning method. The effect of SiO2 addition on structure of the composite fiber at microscopic level is studied, which subsequently correlated to the mechanical performance. The best concentration ratio for composite fiber is identified by screening SiO2 concentration from 0.025 w/w% to 0.5 w/w%. The experimental results revealed that the SiO2 at a low concentration of 0.1 w/w% was well distributed. The breaking stress, breaking strain and Young’s modulus at 0.1 w/w% SiO2 addition of the RSF fibers increased considerably compared to the neat RSF fibers from 243±3 to 458±21 MPa, 51±4 % to 54±7 % and 6.34±0.55 to 11.69±1.12 GPa, respectively. To the best of our knowledge, this is the first report for RSF/SiO2 composite fiber. We believed the insight provided in this report which looks into the structural evolution should be beneficial to the future design and building of other advanced functional fibers.