Regenerated Antheraea pernyi Silk Fibroin/Poly(N-isopropylacrylamide) Thermosensitive Composite Hydrogel with Improved Mechanical Strength

At present, Antheraea pernyi silk fibroin (ASF) has attracted research efforts to investigate it as a raw material for fabrication of biomedical devices because of its superior cytocompatibility. Nevertheless, native ASF is not easily processed into a hydrogel without any crosslinking agent, and a single hydrogel shows poor mechanical properties. In this paper, a series of ASF/poly (N-isopropylacrylamide) (PNIPAAm) composite hydrogels with different ASF contents were manufactured by a simple in situ polymerization method without any crosslinking agent. Meanwhile, the structures, morphologies and thermal properties of composite hydrogels were investigated by XRD, FTIR, SEM, DSC and TGA, respectively. The results indicate that the secondary structure of silk in the composite hydrogel can be controlled by changing the ASF content and the thermal stability of composite hydrogels is enhanced with an increase in crystalline structure. The composite hydrogels showed similar lower critical solution temperatures (LCST) at about 32 °C, which matched well with the LCST of PNIPAAm. Finally, the obtained thermosensitive composite hydrogels exhibited enhanced mechanical properties, which can be tuned by varying the content of ASF. This strategy to prepare an ASF-based responsive composite hydrogel with enhanced mechanical properties represents a valuable route for developing the fields of ASF, and, furthermore, their attractive applications can meet the needs of different biomaterial fields.