Crystallite Shapes and Functional Data Analysis of Silk forms using X-ray Diffraction: Microwave Irradiation Effects

Abstract

The silk cocoon of Bombyx mori, fiber, and thin films were considered in our study. The pure silk thin films were prepared by extracting silk from Bombyx mori cocoons. These samples were treated with microwave irradiation at different intervals, and X-ray diffraction data of these samples were obtained. XRD data of these samples were used as an essential input to compute crystallite size along with different Bragg reflections. Employing different statistical tools, the shape of the ordered region for different samples was obtained, and these shapes were analyzed and concluded that the obtained shapes are not ellipsoidal as assumed by earlier researchers and these are multi-shaped and strongly depend on the direction of Bragg reflections. The functional data analysis was also carried out to determine the correlation between physical and microstructural parameters.