High-Throughput Preparation of Silk Fibroin Nanofibers by Modified Bubble-Electrospinning

Abstract

As a kind of natural macromolecular protein molecule extracted from silk, silk fibroin (SF) has been widely used as biological materials in recent years due to its good physical and chemical properties. In this paper, a modified bubble-electrospinning (MBE) using a cone-shaped gas nozzle combined with a copper solution reservoir was applied to obtain high-throughput fabrication of SF nanofibers. In the MBE process, sodium dodecyl benzene sulfonates (SDBS) were used as the surfactant to improve the spinnability of SF solution. The rheological properties and conductivity of the electrospun SF solutions were investigated. And the effects of gas flow volume, SF solution concentration and additive amounts of SDBS on the morphology, property and production of SF nanofibers were studied. The results showed the decrease of gas flow volume could decrease the nanofiber diameter, enhance the diameter distribution, and increase the production of nanofibers. And the maximum yield could reach 3.10 g/h at the SF concentration of 10 wt % and the SDBS concentration of 0.1 wt %.

A mini review on the generation of crimped ultrathin fibers via electrospinning: Materials, strategies, and applications

“…Bubble electrospinning is a favorable technology for the mass production of various nanomaterials, including crimped fibers . The setup of this process contains a pump, liquid storage tank, grounded receptor, high voltage generator, and electrodes (Figure A).…”

Four self-made free surface electrospinning devices for high-throughput preparation of quality nanofibers

“…According to our previous works [21][22][23], the spinning parameters of these four self-made FSEs devices were set as follows: the applied voltages were 40kV, and the working distances from the solution reservoir to the grounded collector were 18cm, and the collector surfaces (200 mm × 200 mm) were covered with conductive aluminum foil in order to easily remove the electrospun nanofiber membranes for further measurements. All the FSE experiments were carried out at room temperature (20℃) and at a relative humidity of 60%.…”

“…Accordingly, many needleless electrospinning methods were presented to obtain high-throughput production of nanofibers in recent years [13][14][15][16][17][18][19][20][21][22][23]. Niu et al [13] prepared high-throughput polyacrylonitrile (PAN) nanofibers using a needleless electrospinning method.…”

“…The spinning parameters and yields of the established ES techniques were illustrated in a comparative table (see Table 1). [23] Silk fibroin (SF) 50kV 3.1 g/h…”

“…In our previous work [21,22], a modified bubble-electrospinning (MBE) method was proposed to fabricate high quality PAN nanofibers with high yields. And the mass production of silk fibroin nanofibers was obtained successfully by this method [23]. The schematic presentation of the MBE device was illustrated in Fig.1 (A).…”