14th INTERNATIONAL CONFERENCE ON ENGINEERING & NATURAL SCIENCES, Sivas, Turkey, 18 - 19 July 2022, pp.2-7
Silk consists of filaments of the cocoon spun by the domestic silkworm, Bombyx Mori. It
consists of fibroin macromolecule, which provides excellent biocompatibility and mechanical
properties, as well as biodegradability. Depending on its application area, fibroin can be used
as a gel, powder, fiber, or 3D scaffold. Recently, it has been found that fibroin-based
electrospinning nanofiber structures have high potential usage in the field of tissue
engineering and regenerative medicine. Some research is conducted about using fibroin-based
nanofibrous surfaces in the biomedical field, such as tissue supports that can replace with
natural tissues, in medical prosthesis (artificial blood vessel, artificial organ), controlled drug
release, and wound dressing. The ideal solvent systems for the production of fibroin
electrospun nanofiber surfaces are still being investigated. Aqueous or organic salt-containing
systems that include calcium/chloride/water (Ajisawa method), lithium bromide/ethanol, lithium
bromide/ethanol/water, and calcium nitrate/methanol/water are the most common solvent systems
used. However, these solvent systems have various disadvantages such as long processing
steps and the need for additional processing steps to remove the salt used in the solvent
systems. In this study, an electrospinning solution of fibroin was prepared from silk fiber in
one step. Within this study, silk fiber was dissolved directly in a formic acid/calcium chloride
solution. Then, fibroin nanofiber production was carried out with different electrospinning
parameters (voltage, feed rate, distance) from the prepared fibroin solution. SEM images of
the produced fibroin-based nanofiber surfaces were examined and the produced surfaces were
characterized. The nanofiber diameters were calculated using Image which is an image
processing program. The produced nanofibrous surfaces consisted of smooth, bead-free fibers
with diameters of about 500 nm to 1.5 μm.