Wöltje M, Isenberg KL, Cherif C, Aibibu D. Continuous Wet Spinning of Regenerated Silk Fibers from Spinning Dopes Containing 4% Fibroin Protein.
Int J Mol Sci 2023;
24:13492. [PMID:
37686298 PMCID:
PMC10487761 DOI:
10.3390/ijms241713492]
[Citation(s) in RCA: 0] [Impact Index Per Article: 0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [MESH Headings] [Grants] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 07/20/2023] [Revised: 08/23/2023] [Accepted: 08/29/2023] [Indexed: 09/10/2023] Open
Abstract
The wet spinning of fibers from regenerated silk fibroin has long been a research goal. Due to the degradation of the molecular structure of the fibroin protein during the preparation of the regenerated silk fibroin solution, fibroin concentrations with at least 10% protein content are required to achieve sufficient viscosity for wet spinning. In this study, a spinning dope formulation of regenerated silk fibroin is presented that shows a rheological behavior similar to that of native silk fibroin isolated from the glands of B. mori silkworm larvae. In addition, we present a wet-spinning process that enables, for the first time, the continuous wet spinning of regenerated silk fibroin with only 4% fibroin protein content into an endless fiber. Furthermore, the tensile strength of these wet-spun regenerated silk fibroin fibers per percentage of fibroin is higher than that of all continuous spinning approaches applied to regenerated and native silk fibroin published so far.
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