Highly Absorbent Silk Fibroin Protein Xerogel

last updated: 2024-04-24
TitleHighly Absorbent Silk Fibroin Protein Xerogel
Publication TypePapers in Scientific Journals
Year of Publication2021
AuthorsCheng K., Tao X., Qi Z., Yin Z., Kundu S. C., and Lu S.
Abstract

Highly absorbent polymers have a wide range of applications in biomaterials, agriculture, physiological products of daily uses, and others. Silk fibroin, as a natural biomaterial with excellent biocompatibility and tunable mechanical properties, shows good prospects in the field of biomedicine applications. However, the dried fibroin hydrogel has very low absorbency. In this work, silk fibroin protein is used as the carrier, riboflavin as the photosensitizer, and accordingly, the hydrogel is prepared by free radical cross-linking under ultraviolet light. The fibroin in the hydrogel contains mainly the random coil structure. The covalent bond cross-linking hinders the crystallization of the silk fibroin, thereby an amorphous silk fibroin hydrogel is obtained. After drying, this xerogel can absorb water 90 times more than its own mass and assimilates a good amount of water within a minute. In vitro and in vivo rabbit ear hemostasis experiments show that this fabricated xerogel has good hemostatic properties. Therefore, this xerogel exhibits good promise for rapid hemostasis of wounds and absorbing other body exudates.

JournalACS Biomaterials Science & Engineering
Volume8
Issue8
Pagination3594–3607
Date Published2021-07-26
PublisherACS Publications
ISSN2373-9878
DOI10.1021/acsbiomaterials.1c00467
URLhttps://pubs.acs.org/doi/10.1021/acsbiomaterials.1c00467
KeywordsAbsorbent, Hemostatic material, hydrogel, Silk Fibroin, Xerogel
RightsrestrictedAccess
Peer reviewedyes
Statuspublished

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