Abstract
An environmental physical method described herein was developed to improve the tensile properties of Bombyx mori cocoon sericin films, by using the plasticizer of glycerol, which has a nontoxic effect compared with other chemical crosslinkers. The changes in the tensile characteristics and the structure of glycerolated (0–40 wt% of glycerol) sericin films were investigated. Sericin films, both in dry and wet states, showed enhanced tensile properties, which might be regulated by the addition of different concentrations of glycerol. The introduction of glycerol results in the higher amorphous structure in sericin films as evidenced by analysis of attenuated total reflection Fourier transform infrared (ATR-FTIR) spectra, thermogravimetry (TGA) and differential scanning calorimetry (DSC) curves. Scanning Electron Microscopy (SEM) observation revealed that glycerol was homogeneously blended with sericin molecules when its content was 10 wt%, while a small amount of redundant glycerol emerged on the surface of sericin films when its content was increased to 20 wt% or higher. Our results suggest that the introduction of glycerol is a novel nontoxic strategy which can improve the mechanical features of sericin-based materials and subsequently promote the feasibility of its application in tissue engineering.
Highlights
Tissue engineering is an increasingly popular approach for impaired tissues and organs therapy
The secondary structure of sericin film and glycerol blended sericin films were characterized by attenuated total reflection Fourier transform infrared (ATR-FTIR)
The position of the maxima suggested that sericin films with 10 wt% and 20 wt% glycerol shows the main structure of turns similar to sericin film without glycerol
Summary
Tissue engineering is an increasingly popular approach for impaired tissues and organs therapy. Collagen [3], fibroin [4,5], gelatin [6] are the most commonly utilized proteins for tissue engineering application Biomaterials based on these proteins still cannot satisfy all the tissue engineering requirements due to a few problems in the biocompatibility, the mechanical properties and the degradation ratio. The cast dry films based on silk cocoon sericin show fragile tensile properties This leads to the difficulty of obtaining integrated sericin formulations and the inconvenience of its practical application. To avoid such hurdles, chemical cross-linkers, such as polyethylene glycol diglycidyl ether (PEG-DE) [19] and glutaraldehyde and dimethylolurea (DMU) [20], were usually used to improve the tensile properties of sericin-based films. Fourier transform infrared (FTIR), thermogravimetry (TGA), differential scanning calorimetry (DSC) and Scanning Electron Microscopy (SEM) determination were conducted to analyze the structural changes of sericin films
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