Bio-doping of regenerated silk fibroin solution and films: a green route for biomanufacturing

Silk fibroin (SF) is a natural biocompatible material that can be integrated in a variety of photonic systems and optoelectronics: i.e. organic lasing from dye-doped nano-structured silk film. In this context, biological incorporation of doping molecules into SF by means of feeding silk worms with d...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:RSC advances 2014-01, Vol.4 (64), p.33687-33694
Main Authors: Sagnella, A., Chieco, C., Di Virgilio, N., Toffanin, S., Posati, T., Pistone, A., Bonetti, S., Muccini, M., Ruani, G., Benfenati, V., Rossi, F., Zamboni, R.
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Binding
Diets
Doping
Dyes
Nanostructure
Silk
Silk fibroin
Vibration
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Summary:Silk fibroin (SF) is a natural biocompatible material that can be integrated in a variety of photonic systems and optoelectronics: i.e. organic lasing from dye-doped nano-structured silk film. In this context, biological incorporation of doping molecules into SF by means of feeding silk worms with dyes to their diet could be an innovative and eco-sustainable approach to obtain doped SF substrates, thus avoiding additional chemical processes and post-treatments of the protein solution. In the present work, we demonstrated that SF regenerated solutions and films containing rhodamine B (RhB) could be successfully obtained from the cocoons of Bombyx mori fed with a RhB-added diet (RhB-md-SF). Comparative analyses of optical and vibration characteristics of the RhB-md-SF solution and films with those of white SF blended with RhB (RhB-d-SF) revealed significant differences, suggesting that the silkworm's metabolism could be involved in the binding mechanism of SF with RhB. In conclusion, we observed that the doping diet is a promising method for the green fabrication of SF-based optically active materials, and it opens novel routes for silk-based biophotonics.
ISSN:2046-2069
2046-2069
DOI:10.1039/C4RA04622F