Super Absorbent Silk Fibroin Hydrogel

Abstract

Super absorbent polymers have a wide range of applications in the fields of biomaterials, agriculture, physiological products of daily-uses, and others. Silk fibroin, as a natural biomaterial with excellent biocompatibility, is showing a good prospect of applications in the field of biomedicine. In this work, silk protein fibroin is used as the carrier, riboflavin as the photosensitizer, and accordingly hydrogel is prepared by free radical cross-linking under ultraviolet light. The fibroin in the hydrogel contains mainly the random coil structure, and the covalent bond cross-linking hinders the crystallization of the silk fibroin, thereby an amorphous silk fibroin hydrogel is obtained. This hydrogel has a capacity to absorb water 90 times more than its own mass, a fast water absorption speed, and absorbs a good amount of water within a minute. This fabricated silk protein fibroin hydrogel having a quick water-absorbing ability; therefore, this can be used for rapid hemostasis of wounds and for absorbing other body exudates.