The research team made the world's thinnest silk fibroin nanofiber belt

Professor Zhang Yaopeng and Shao Huili from the State Key Laboratory of Fiber Materials Modification at Donghua University collaborated with Benjamin S. Hsiao, a professor at the State University of New York at Stony Brook, to propose a new multi-level structural model of silk and successfully develop the world's thinnest silk fibroin nanofiber. band. Recently, the results were published in full text in the American Chemical Society - Nano.

As the basic building block of silk multi-stage structure, silk fibroin nanofibers are especially important for the design and construction of high-performance silk protein materials such as artificial spider silk. The Zhang Yaopeng team used a sodium hydroxide/urea aqueous solution system to strip the silk filaments into a nanofiber ribbon with a thickness of about 0.4 nm and a width of about 27 nm. This is by far the world's thinnest silk fibroin nanofiber belt, the thickness of which is only the monolayer thickness of silk fibroin, which is equivalent to the thickness of single-layer graphene.

The nanofiber ribbon is mainly composed of a native β-sheet layer, a random coil and an α-helical conformation in natural silk. The researchers confirmed this information by a variety of characterization techniques such as atomic force microscopy, transmission electron microscopy, and small-angle X-ray scattering techniques. The computerized molecular dynamics simulation technique was used to simulate the stripping of silk into sodium silk fibroin in sodium hydroxide/urea aqueous solution. The dynamic process of the fiber.

The silk fibroin nanofiber band can be used as a reinforcing component or a direct building unit by self-assembly or ordered construction, and it is expected to prepare a silk fibroin-based material having excellent performance or functionality.