Open Access

ARTICLE

Fabrication of High Toughness Silk Fibroin/Tungsten Disulfide Nanoparticles Hybrid Fiber and Self-Heating Textile by Wet Spinning

Jianjun Guo^1,2, Lingling Jia³, Sandra Senyo Fometu⁴, Qiang Ma⁵, Jinjin Wang¹, Hang Li¹, Lei Jiang⁵, Guohua Wu^1,*

1 College of Biotechnology, Jiangsu University of Science and Technology, Zhenjiang, 212100, China
2 College of Agriculture, Anshun University, Anshun, 561000, China
3 College of Food and Pharmaceutical Sciences, Ningbo University, Ningbo, 315800, China
4 Biofuels Institute, School of Environment and Safety Engineering, Jiangsu University, Zhenjiang, 212013, China
5 College of Environmental and Chemical Engineering, Jiangsu University of Science and Technology, Zhenjiang, 212100, China

* Corresponding Author: Guohua Wu. Email:

(This article belongs to this Special Issue: Natural Fibre Composites: Design, Materials Selection and Fabrication)

Journal of Renewable Materials 2022, 10(12), 3373-3389. https://doi.org/10.32604/jrm.2022.021087

Received 27 December 2021; Accepted 27 January 2022; Issue published 14 July 2022

Abstract

Traditionally, silkworm silk has been used to make high-quality textiles. Nevertheless, various wastes from silkworm silk textiles that are no longer used are increasing, which is also causing considerable waste and contamination. This issue is causing widespread concern in countries that use more silk. Regenerated silk fibroin (RSF) fibers have been shown to be fragile and tender, which prohibits RSF from being widely used as a structural component. Therefore, enriching the function of silk and enhancing the RSF mechanical properties are important directions to expand the comprehensive utilization of silk products. In the present research, wet spinning was used to create a series of RSF/tungsten disulfide (WS₂) nanoparticles (NPs) hybrid fiber having distinct WS₂ nanoparticles concentrations. It was discovered that the temperature of hybrid fibers containing 0.8 wt% RSF/WS₂ nanoparticles might climb from 20.4°C to 85.6°C in 1 min and 108.3°C in 10 min after being exposed to simulated sunlight for a period of one minute and ten minutes. It also had certain antibacterial activity and thermal stability. Fabrics created by hand mixing had outstanding photothermal characteristics under natural sunlight. Furthermore, adding WS₂ nanoparticles might increase the tensile properties of hybrid fibers, which could be caused by the reality that the blending of WS₂ nanoparticles inhibited the self-assembly of β-sheets in RSF reaction mixture in a dosage-dependent way, as evidenced by the fact that RSF/WS₂ nanoparticles hybrid fibers had lesser β-sheets material, crystalline nature, and crystalline size. The above performance makes the RSF/WS₂ nanoparticles hybrid fibers promising candidates for application in photothermal fabrics as well as military clothing.

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Keywords

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