Carbon nanotube reinforced bombyx mori silk as a biocomposite material for tissue engineering applications

Silk fibers are fibrous protein with unique combination of strength and toughness. Its biocompatibility makes it an ideal candidate for various biomedical applications. We hypothesized that composites consisting of silk and carbon nanotube (CNT) will have superior mechanical properties. This paper describes the production of protein based scaffolds having required mechanical properties and active binding sites for cell attachment and proliferation. To achieve this goal we co-electrospun silk-CNT fibers to fabricate nanofibrous scaffolds for tissue engineering applications. The scaffolds were characterized using Environmental Scanning Electron Microscopy (ESEM), Fourier Transform Infrared (FTIR) spectroscopy, Raman spectroscopy and Wide angle X-Ray Diffraction (WAXD) study. The ideal spinning conditions for generating continuous uniform fibers having diameter of 100 nm or less were determined. Mechanical properties of scaffolds were measured by Kawabata Micro tensile tester and cell-matrix interaction study was carried out using Human chondrosarcoma cells (ATCC HTB94).