Current research on electrospinning of silk fibroin and its blends with natural and synthetic biodegradable polymers

Abstract

Silk fibroin (SF) is a kind of natural polymers with a great potential in biomedical application. Due to its good biocompatibility, biodegradability and minimal inflammatory reaction, SF is an excellent candidate for generating tissue engineering scaffolds. Electrospinning is a simple and effective method to fabricate nanofibers, which has several amazing characteristics such as very large surface area to volume ratio, flexibility in surface functionalities, and superior mechanical performance. The electrospun nanofibers from SF and its blends have been used for varied tissue engineering. This paper will give a brief review about the structure, properties and applications of SF and blend nanofibers via electrospinning.

Keywords

electrospinning / nanofiber / silk fibroin (SF) / biodegradable polymer