Physics Commons^™

Ultrasound Regulated Flexible Protein Materials: Fabrication, Structure And Physical-Biological Properties., Bowen Cai, Hanling Gu, Fang Wang, Kyle Printon, Zhenggui Gu, Xiao Hu

Faculty Scholarship for the College of Science & Mathematics

Ultrasound can be used in the biomaterial field due to its high efficiency, easy operation, no chemical treatment, repeatability and high level of control. In this work, we demonstrated that ultrasound is able to quickly regulate protein structure at the solution assembly stage to obtain the designed properties of protein-based materials. Silk fibroin proteins dissolved in a formic acid-CaCl solution system were treated in an ultrasound with varying times and powers. By altering these variables, the silks physical properties and structures can be fine-tuned and the results were investigated with Fourier transform infrared spectroscopy (FTIR), X-ray diffraction (XRD), scanning electron …