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Encapsulation of oil in silk fibroin biomaterials
Author(s) -
Pritchard Eleanor M.,
Normand Valery,
Hu Xiao,
Budijono Stephanie,
Benczédi Daniel,
Omenetto Fiorenzo,
Kaplan David L.
Publication year - 2014
Publication title -
journal of applied polymer science
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.575
H-Index - 166
eISSN - 1097-4628
pISSN - 0021-8995
DOI - 10.1002/app.39990
Subject(s) - fibroin , encapsulation (networking) , silk , sericin , materials science , polymer science , self healing hydrogels , nanotechnology , composite material , polymer chemistry , computer science , computer network
Microencapsulation is becoming increasingly important in the food, cosmetics, and medicinal industries due to its potential for stabilization and delivery of volatile and delicate compounds. Novel food‐safe techniques for encapsulating oil in silk biomaterials using emulsion‐based processes that exploit silk's unique properties (including amphiphilicity, biocompatibility, aqueous and ambient processing, and tunable physical crosslinking behavior) are described. The sonication‐induced self‐assembly of silk previously applied to hydrogel fabrication replaced the use of the thermal or chemical suspension crosslinking traditionally used to stabilize the aqueous protein phase in emulsions. Stable, physically crosslinked silk micro‐ and macro‐particles loaded with oil or water‐soluble dye were produced by aliquoting sonicated silk solutions into an oil bath. Oil micro‐droplets emulsified in aqueous silk solutions did not impede the self‐assembly of silk into films or hydrogel networks. In O/W/O emulsions, particle morphology and silk permeability to a model lipophilic dye in the interior phase were controllable via processing. © 2013 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. J. Appl. Polym. Sci., 2014 , 131 , 39990.