CO2-assisted synthesis of silk fibroin hydrogels and aerogels

Biocompatible and biodegradable porous materials based on silk fibroin (SF), a natural protein derived from the Bombyx mori silkworm, are being extensively investigated for use in biomedical applications including mammalian cell bioprocessing, tissue engineering and drug delivery applications. In this work, low-pressure, gaseous CO2 is used as an acidifying agent to fabricate SF hydrogels. This low-pressure CO2 acidification method is compared to an acidification method using high-pressure CO2 to demonstrate the effect of CO2 mass transfer and pressure on SF sol–gel kinetics. The effect of SF molecular weight on the sol–gel kinetics is determined using the low-pressure CO2 method. The results from these studies demonstrate that low-pressure CO2 processing proves to be a facile method for synthesizing 3-D SF hydrogels.