Recovery of silk fibroin from sericulture waste and formulation of a non-toxic calcium chloride based spinning solution for electrospinning

Abstract

Silk fibroin is among the most attractive natural fibre-forming polymers for biomedical electrospinning, but its use is constrained at both ends of the preparation chain: sericin must be removed without hydrolysing the fibroin, and the solvent system used to dissolve it must leave residues acceptable in a product intended for human contact. This work develops and quantitatively characterises the complete feedstock preparation route from sericulture waste to a spinnable solution