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Regenerated silk fibroin (SF) mats were fabricated using electrospinning technique, followed by mild water vapor annealing to effectively tune the structures and improve the mechanical properties of the mats at different annealing times and temperatures. The breaking strength and the breaking energy of themats treated with water vapor at 65°C for 12 h reached 6.0MPa and 171.7 J/kg, respectively. The conformational transition of the SF mats was significantly influenced by the treating temperature, while the influence of time was comparatively limited. The influence is consistent with the time-temperature equivalent principle and would be helpful for the preparation of water-vapor-annealed silk-based biomaterials for various applications. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The outstanding properties of spider dragline silk are likely to be determined by a combination of the primary sequences and the secondary structure of the silk proteins. Antheraea pernyi silk has more similar sequences to spider dragline silk than the silk from its domestic counterpart, Bombyx mori. This makes it much potential as a resource for biospinning spider dragline silk. This paper further verified its possibility as the resource from the mechanical properties and the structures of the A. pernyi silks prepared by forcible reeling. It is surprising that the stress-strain curves of the A. pernyi fibers show similar sigmoidal shape to those of spider dragline silk. Under a controlled reeling speed of 95 mm/s, the breaking energy was 1.04 × 105 J/kg, the tensile strength was 639 MPa and the initial modulus was 9.9 GPa. It should be noted that this breaking energy of the A. pernyi silk approaches that of spider dragline silk. The tensile properties, the optical orientation and the β-sheet structure contents of the silk fibers are remarkably increased by raising the spinning speeds up to 95 mm/s. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]