Recent Progress of Applying Mesoscopic Functionalization Engineering Principles to Spin Advanced Regenerated Silk Fibroin Fibers

Abstract

The Bombyx mori silk fibers are regarded as one of the most fascinating flexible materials in the twenty-first century and have shown great potential in areas including fiber sensors, fiber actuators, optical fibers, energy harvester, etc. The regenerated silk fibroin (SF) molecules taken from B. mori cocoon fibers have been verified to be capable of mesoscopically reconstructing during the SF molecules refolding process. The key concern of this review is to summarize recent engineering applying principles of meso reconstruction, meso hybridization and meso doping to synthesize artificial regenerated SF fibers with enhanced or even novel functions, especially based on rerouting the refolding process of SF molecules via controlling nucleation pathway. In general, the knowledge of the meso reconstruction of silk fibre shed light on the design and fabrication of other ultra-performance SF materials from the crystallization and meso structural point of view.

Graphical Abstract

Funding

National Natural Science Foundation of China(12074322)

Science and Technology Planning Project of Guangdong Province(2018B030331001)