Silkworm Self-spun Fluorescent Silk Fiber with Enhanced Mechanical Properties

Silk fiber (SF) is a well-known natural material broadly applied for the common textile industry and modern medical field cases. This work introduces a simple process for silkworm self-spun producing fluorescent silk fiber (FSF) with enhanced strength. Experimental, by applying the nontoxic fluorescein sodium (FS), water solution was employed to pretreat the mulberry leaves (ML), and then applied to feeding the silkworm. Our results have shown that the obtained FSF has kept similar tortuosity as with the common SF while the mechanical properties were obviously enhanced due to these special feeding process caused by the reconstruction of β-folding structure of protein reconstruction. Compared to the normal SF, the FSF has shown the expected fluorescent property while keeping similar thermal stability.