Effect of chitosan on morphology and conformation of electrospun silk fibroin nanofibers

The electrospinning of silk fibroin(SF)/chitosan(CS) blends with different composition ratios was performed with formic acid as a spinning solvent. The SF/CS blends containing up to the CS content of 30% could be electrospun into the continuous fibrous structure, although pure CS was not able to be electrospun into the fibrous structure. As-spun SF/CS blend nanofibers showed smaller diameter and narrower diameter distribution than pure SF nanofibers, and the diameter gradually decreased from 450 to 130 nm with the addition of CS in blends. However, at the blend compositions with above 40 wt% chitosan, the continuous SF nanofibers containing CS beads were produced. We also investigated the influence of the methanol treatment on the secondary structure of as-spun SF or SF/CS blend nanofibers by means of ATR-IR and solid-state CP-MAS C-13-NMR. Comparing with the pure SF nanofibers, the conformational change of the as-spun SF/CS blend nanofibers into beta-sheet was faster because the CS with rigid backbone synergistically might promote the conformational transition of SF by an intermolecular interaction. (C) 2004 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.