Sun Jianwu, Monreal Santiago Guillermo, Zhou Wen, Portale Giuseppe, Kamperman Marleen
Polymer Science, Zernike Institute for Advanced Materials, University of Groningen, Groningen 9747 AG, The Netherlands.
Products and Processes for Biotechnology, Engineering and Technology Institute Groningen, University of Groningen, Groningen 9747 AG, The Netherlands.
ACS Sustain Chem Eng. 2022 Dec 5;10(48):15968-15977. doi: 10.1021/acssuschemeng.2c05411. Epub 2022 Nov 22.
Keratin is one of the most abundant biopolymers, produced on a scale of millions of tons per year but often simply discarded as waste. Due to its abundance, biocompatibility, and excellent mechanical properties, there is an extremely high interest in developing protocols for the recycling of keratin and its conversion into protein-based materials. In this work, we describe a novel protocol for the conversion of keratin from wool into hybrid fibers. Our protocol uses a synthetic polyanion, which undergoes complex coacervation with keratin, leading to a viscous liquid phase that can be used directly as a dope for dry-spinning. The use of polyelectrolyte complexation allows us to use all of the extracted keratin, unlike previous works that were limited to the fraction with the highest molecular weight. The fibers prepared by this protocol show excellent mechanical properties, humidity responsiveness, and ion conductivity, which makes them promising candidates for applications as a strain sensor.
角蛋白是最丰富的生物聚合物之一，年产量达数百万吨，但通常被简单地当作废物丢弃。由于其储量丰富、生物相容性好且具有出色的机械性能，人们对开发角蛋白回收方案及其转化为蛋白质基材料的兴趣极高。在这项工作中，我们描述了一种将羊毛角蛋白转化为混合纤维的新方案。我们的方案使用一种合成聚阴离子，它与角蛋白发生复合凝聚，形成一种粘性液相，可直接用作干法纺丝的纺丝原液。与之前仅限于使用最高分子量部分的研究不同，聚电解质络合的使用使我们能够利用所有提取的角蛋白。通过该方案制备的纤维具有出色的机械性能、湿度响应性和离子导电性，这使其成为作为应变传感器应用的有前途的候选材料。
