Silk fibroin hydrogel is an interesting natural material in various biomedical applications. However, the self-assembled gelation takes a long time. In this work, different alcohol types are used as gelation enhancers for aqueous silk fibroin solution. Monohydric alcohols having carbon chain length from C1 to C4 and polyhydric alcohols with the number of mono- to tri- hydroxyl groups were used as the enhancers which are effective for rapid gelation. The addition of monohydric alcohol distinctively reduced the gelation time, comparing to the polyhydric alcohol. The gelation process is directly dependent on the polarity of alcohol and hydrophobicity. The alcohol mediated gelation imparts strong viscoelastic property and enhanced compressive modulus of resulting hydrogels. This is due to the effective formation of self-assembled beta sheet network of the silk fibroin chains facilitates the gelation process.
Keywords: Alcohol enhancing; Gelation process; Hydrophobic interaction; Monohydric alcohol; Polyhydric alcohol; Silk fibroin hydrogel.
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