Silk Fibroin Acts as a Self-Emulsifier to Prepare Hierarchically Porous Silk Fibroin Scaffolds through Emulsion-Ice Dual Templates.

ABSTRACT: Silk fibroin (SF) has shown enormous potentials in various fields; however, application of SF in emulsion technology is quite limited. Here, we use SF as a self-emulsifier to form an oil-in-water (O/W) emulsion by emulsifying 1-butanol in SF aqueous solution. This showed that SF possessed strong surface activity to stabilize the O/W emulsion without the need for any other surface-active agent until its solidification because of 1-butanol-induced conformational transition of SF to β-sheet. After freezing the preformed emulsions at -20 °C, robust three-dimensional porous SF scaffolds were prepared without the need for any further post-treatment. The evolution from the O/W emulsion to porous scaffold formation under freezing was tracked, and an emulsion-ice dual template mechanism was propose

SUBMITTER: Wen J 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC6045383 | biostudies-literature | 2018 Mar

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature