Processing Strategies to Obtain Highly Porous Silk Fibroin Structures with Tailored Microstructure and Molecular Characteristics and Their Applicability in Water Remediation

The present work reports on the control of silk fibroin (SF) porous structures performance through various processing methods. study includes analysis two dissolving techniques (CaCl2/H2O/EtOH ternary and LiBr/H2O binary solutions), three regeneration methods (gelation, lyophilization gas foaming) one post-processing (EtOH). In all cases, followed steps lead to SF with porosity values above 94% large surface areas. Also, results about samples microstructure, secondary organization, crystallinity water behavior, reveal a direct correlation between properties. Thanks achieved progress, varying were evaluated for metalloids (As5+ As3+) heavy metals (Cr6+ Cr3+) adsorption, observing relationship ionic species adsorption ability. Thus, it is shown that properties based processing, represents suitable ecofriendly approach development bio-based materials environmental applications.