Low-Cost and Effective Fabrication of Biocompatible Nanofibers from Silk and Cellulose-Rich Materials

Published in ACS Biomaterials Science & Engineering, vol. 2(4), pp. 526–534 (2016) · American Chemical Society
DOI: 10.1021/acsbiomaterials.5b00500

Summary

This work presents a low-cost, effective route to biocompatible nanofibre mats made from natural, protein- and cellulose-based materials. Silk fibroin was blended with pure cellulose and, in a greener variant, with cellulose-rich parsley-powder agro-waste, using trifluoroacetic acid as a single common solvent that produced highly homogeneous solutions suitable for electrospinning. The resulting composite nanofibres were well-defined and defect-free, with diameters of roughly 65–100 nm. Their mechanical behaviour could be tuned by composition: adding pure cellulose to fibroin stiffened the mats, whereas adding the parsley waste made them more flexible. Cell tests confirmed excellent biocompatibility, with the mats promoting fibroblast proliferation — showing that even food agro-waste can be turned into functional biomedical nanomaterials.

Authors & Affiliations

Topics

Biocompatible Nanofibers Sustainable Materials Agro-Waste Valorization Tissue Engineering

Materials

Silk Fibroin Cellulose

Linari Electrospinning Systems

Electrospinning machines by Linari Nanotech
Linari Nanotech designs and manufactures electrospinning systems for nanofiber research and production — including natural and biopolymer feedstocks.
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